


After The Storm

by taakopines



Category: Half-Life
Genre: Angst and Romance, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Grief/Mourning, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Team as Family, selective mutism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-24
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2019-11-28 21:47:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 47,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18214070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taakopines/pseuds/taakopines
Summary: After their return from the now destroyed Borealis, the Resistance leaders must adjust to their new lives post-war. The One Free Man must decide what comes next now that everyone is free, and Alyx is challenged with navigating this next world without her father. On top of all that, the two heroes have come to realize something terrifying: they have no excuse for ignoring their feelings anymore.Rated T for blood, language, and just a smidgen of sexual content.NOTE: This is not a continuation of Aurora.





	1. Chapter 1

The war was over.

Eli Vance was dead, and a reluctant Isaac had assumed his position within the Resistance. The Combine was cut off and cut down one by one by rebels on the ground. After a grueling, months-long journey from which Alyx and Gordon had no idea if they’d return, the mythical Borealis was tracked down and destroyed. The war was over, the G-Man was gone, the Resistance had succeeded, and over twenty years of horror and fighting and death and blood and destruction… had met their end.

White Forest was more alive the night of their return than it had probably ever been. Alyx had not slept, had not stopped, had not _breathed_ since the day she watched her father’s sudden, gruesome, undeserving, horrible death, and so the moment her eyes met Dr. Kleiner’s, the man who might as well have been a second dad to her all these years, she practically melted like an ice cube on summer pavement, sprinting into his arms at full speed, much to both his delight and dismay. Barney’s enthusiasm to see them both was not far below hers—his old, goofy laugh radiated out of him as he gave Gordon a firm jolt to the shoulder of his HEV suit, beaming from ear to ear and chuckling out words of praise. Dr. Mossman was quiet, timid, a shy smile forming familiar creases on her face, though her eyes clearly mourned for Eli and regretted so, so much.

All the ordinary members of the Rebellion whooped and hollered loudly and triumphantly in the face of their return from the Borealis. Humans and Vortigaunts hugged, danced, cried, laughed, and basked in the glory of this huge victory. Everyone in this room had lost someone to the Seven Hour War. Mothers, fathers, siblings, children, best friends, lovers. There wasn’t a single person in this place on this evening whose tears didn’t shed for someone they once knew. As for the Vorts, though the acts had been long since forgiven, they mourned the loss of the ones who made first contact on Earth and had been met with guns, grenades, and crowbars. The deaths were nothing short of tragic on both sides of the line in Black Mesa those first days. 

“Hey, listen,” Barney spoke up after a long bout of celebration, motioning with his hands for everyone to quiet down. “I have somethin’ I need to show you guys. Been savin’ it for a while.” As he turned and gestured the group to follow, Gordon and Alyx shared with each other a teasing glance of _oh, boy, what could it possibly be this time_ , while Isaac assumed an expression of deep apprehension.

He led the little group down a corridor to an elevator as the rest of the Resistance resumed their joyous celebrating. A long— _much_ too long—ride down the lift and another hallway or two down to the dormitories, and Barney finally walked up to the door hiding his little secret, the look on his face only a little more playfully arrogant than usual. “Alyx, remember that old shopping center we raided a few years back, before I joined the Combine? Well, uh, I may have hidden a little of my bounty from that…”

A grin overtook his face as he turned the doorknob and flicked the light switch inside. This small room in the barracks had been piled with boxes full of bottles of every type of alcohol one could imagine surviving an apocalypse. “ _Ta-daaah_. I thought it’d be nice to save for a special occasion. And, well, it’s not like it gets more special than this!”

“Barney,” Alyx laughed a breathy laugh, stepping forward into the closet. “How the hell did you get all this in here?!”

Dr. Kleiner’s tone wasn’t quite so amused. “ _Yes_ , Barney, how _did_ you get this in here?” he echoed with a glare as he wormed his way into the closet, picked up a bottle of wine, and examined the label closely, adjusting his glasses as he squinted and read.

“Ah, c’mon, you guys. A good magician never reveals his secrets.”

With another disbelieving laugh, Alyx picked up a random bottle from one of the crates and immediately grimaced. “Oh, that’s definitely not good anymore.” She stared at it with disgust for a few moments before her expression was replaced with one of realization. “We can throw the rotten ones off the roof!”

“Hey, that sounds like fun.” Barney gave the man beside him a good nudge. “Whaddya say, Gordon?” He shrugged a silent reply, which the other took as a yes.

The team spent the next little while unpacking and sorting these crates from this long-abandoned liquor store, astonished at the amount of alcohol there was here and the fact that it had even remained discernable after all these years. Isaac, after careful consideration of each of the labels and dates, had decided that most of the wines were still okay for consumption. A few bottles of whisky seemed to be drinkable, too, and—of course, since this was Russia once, after all—enough vodka to get an entire organization drunk (which was most certainly the plan tonight). Following an incident where Gordon was chosen as the guinea pig to open one of the ambiguously-dated bottles of beer, and it looked and smelled more like a failed grade-school science experiment than something anyone should ever put into their body, a unanimous decision was made that its best use would be target practice.

With great care, they lugged the boxes, now organized nicely, into the lift and took them up to the group that had been anticipating their return. “This calls for a party!” Barney yelled in great triumph as the lift’s gate opened and he held up one of the crates, sending the rest of the Resistance into a louder cheer than before. Alyx made sure to hide the bad bottles away somewhere for later, while the guys handed out bottles and gathered together old cups and mugs.

That night in White Forest, these well-deserving people, who had gone through the worst of the worst and managed to _somehow_ come out the other side, partied and drank, reminiscing about the good moments of their past lives and rejoicing that this was the day that their new lives began. Things weren’t going to go back to the way they were at the turn of the century. Society had been effectively destroyed by the Combine, leaving only stragglers of the human race—and, well, of any race native to Earth—and the process of sifting through the rubble and putting the remaining zombies out of their misery was not going to be a quick one. Not all of the world’s problems were gone today, but the biggest ones were. There were still going to be headcrabs, and antlions, and confused Combine zombies (or _Zombines_ , as Alyx had regrettably snickered out at one point) holding grenades over their heads. But the human race had a new chance to flourish. Dr. Kleiner’s awkward message to the masses to “do your part” had not been taken with a grain of salt, and in nine months, a new generation would be born unto a hopeful world, welcoming them with open arms as the new saviors of this land their parents and grandparents fought so hard to protect with them in mind. The Earth had managed to keep spinning, and life managed to keep fighting, and now it had a _damn_ good chance at winning again.

So, though the world’s problems continued, that didn’t mean there wasn’t anything to celebrate. And celebrate they did.

And since it had been years since any of them had gotten drunk, it didn’t take very long.

CDs and cassettes that rebels had managed to smuggle out of their old homes were dragged out of boxes, and that only brought the mood higher. The older generation enthusiastically belted the lyrics to old songs from their youth, while the young rebels confusedly but confidently joined in. No one in the bunker had a single care in the world at this point, which was saying something. There was seldom time for things like genuine laughter or entertainment when you were under constant threat of attack. The people like Alyx who were children during the first phases of the war found joy in little, unconventional ways, like robots named after animals, or drawing on the concrete walls and floors with little scraps of chalk. After all the children grew up, there wasn’t a lot of room for joy anymore. No matter if you were a mother or father, or a teenager, or still just a kid—if you were big enough to fire a gun, you had to fight. These children of war grew up into adults of war, and desolation, and little hope for the future. But now, they could forget all of that, even if only for the night. They could dance and sing and jump for joy because joy was within reach.

It had to have been close to five in the morning now. The sun showed just a glimpse of its light on the horizon, slowly setting fire to the dark blue blanket of the night sky. Most of the party below had died down by now, with just a few stragglers remaining. Barney, Alyx, and Gordon had all retreated to the roof of the bunker as things began to get quieter, taking advantage of their new ability to lie in the grass without fear of the Combine, though they still kept their guns close and their ears scanning for the chittering of headcrabs.

“Half those people are gonna have the worst hangover of their lives when they wake up,” Barney chuckled, sipping whiskey from a metal coffee mug. He was laying on his back in the grass, legs crossed and an arm folded under his neck. Alyx was sat criss-cross with her own cup in her lap—she had probably drunk the most out of the three of them, filled with the excitement similar to someone on their 21st birthday, so she was significantly inebriated. Gordon, on the other hand, hadn’t done much drinking at all, though the taste of vodka as it hit his tongue for the first time since grad school had caused a wave of relief and nostalgia to consume him. A shot or two was enough for him. Maybe it was anxiety, or maybe it was simply survival instinct to stay alert, but he couldn’t bring himself to get distracted, even in the face of moderate safety, nor could he be convinced to step out of his HEV suit. His back leaned against the rising slope of the hill and his legs were stretched out before him, hands rested comfortably on his stomach. Nothing about this felt real. No matter how many times he heard the words “it’s over,” he just couldn’t wrap his brain around it. He had been running, running, running since all of this started—running to escape the facility, running to find the Lambda stragglers, running to keep from becoming some grunt’s lunch on Xen, blinking twenty years into the future and running for a million new reasons. It had been so long since he stopped thinking long enough to appreciate the softness of a bed, or the taste of a nice, warm meal, or the feeling of hot water on his skin. He had been doing this for a couple of months and was exhausted, he couldn’t begin to fathom what it would be like to live your entire life like this. 

And yet, he was the one who received all the credit. The stragglers from the Resistance met him at every turn with wonder and praise, “Dr. Freeman!” “That’s Gordon Freeman!” “I can’t believe it’s you!” Because of his actions in Black Mesa on that day, his pure survival instinct and a determination to stop what he had started, he had become the Messiah for a group of lost people. An ordinary 27-year-old man who had barely earned the title of Doctor had somehow found himself at the wrong place at the wrong time and was now the One Free Man, the Opener of the Way. And yeah, sure, he supposed he was. He played an instrumental part in the banishing of the Combine, of the destruction of the Borealis and the severing of his contract with a force he hadn’t even begun to understand. But anyone in his circumstances could’ve done the same thing, and he sure as hell didn’t do it alone. Eli. Isaac. Alyx. Barney. Judith. The entire Resistance. This wasn’t the work of one man, this was an entire population of people rising up and taking initiative to save their planet from conquer. He was no more an Opener of the Way than any of these people. They didn’t need him nearly as much as they thought they did.

But… “it’s over.” Their biggest evil was gone, not thanks to him but to _everyone_ , and he just could not believe what he was hearing. Maybe now that things would get a bit calmer he could go back to being a normal person. He could don his old white coat and stupid red-and-black tie and go back to working late in a little office and writing equations on whiteboards. There were two decades of scientific advancements for him to catch up on, and that would probably take him at least a year (or a few months, if he worked quickly, which he typically did). He could stop being the next Jesus Christ. There was no One Free Man now— _everyone_ was free.

…He realized all of that was in reach for him now. It _was_ over. It _really was over._

“We’re actually safe now, aren’t we?”


	2. Chapter 2

“We’re actually safe now, aren’t we?”

Two heads quickly jerked around to look at Gordon, then each other, then back at him. He hadn’t quite thought that one through.

After a few moments, Barney was the first to pipe up. “Whoa, Gordon. I haven’t heard a peep outta you since Black Mesa.”

“I haven’t heard you speak since…” Alyx’s poor drunk brain needed a minute to think mid-sentence. “…ever!”

“…Yeah. I’m sorry. Uh…” Wow. Not a word in over three months, and now he couldn’t even find them. They just seemed to stick in his throat, leaving them half-baked and barely audible. He coughed and tried again, glancing down at his hands, which were now fidgeting uncomfortably. “I had selective mutism when I was a kid. Everyone thought I grew out of it, but… apparently not.”

Alyx simply stared, mouth slightly agape and eyes the size of dinner plates. Barney’s reaction was a bit more… contained, though similar. “I get it, man. Glad you’re back.”

Gordon didn’t have much else to say at that point. After the staring subsided, and his two companions went back to watching the rising sun consume the stars, his eyes’ focus left his hands and went to nothing in particular. He supposed his question was rhetorical and didn’t necessarily need to be asked aloud, but nonetheless it felt good to break the silence. It felt amazing that he could at all. Part of the feeling of running and not being able to relax was the feeling of having his voice stolen from him. He had no idea until he left that test chamber that it would be months until he could muster the energy to speak again—it hadn’t happened since kindergarten and wasn’t something that was necessarily common to follow one to adulthood. He guessed he just hadn’t had something stressful enough happen to trigger it. But the collapse of society sure did it.

“Waitwaitwait,” a slurred voice piped up again. Alyx sat up from her previous leaning position and turned her body to face him. “So you’re saying that… this whole time, you could talk? Because I ss _s_ eriously thought you, like, couldn’t speak. Like you didn’t have a voicebox or whatever.”

Gordon swallowed. “No, I can. But not… Not during stressful situations. Like I said, I had no idea I still had it…”

“Wow. It’s a nice voice. You gotta good voice, Gordon.”

“Ooookay, I’m gonna get her to bed before she says anything else I can use as blackmail,” Barney laughed, setting his mug on the grass and lifting himself up. A huff of annoyance came from Alyx as she took his hands and got up with his assistance, though she didn’t protest much at all. Despite her drunkenness, she was clearly just as tired as the other two were. Gordon decided a long rest was exactly what he needed at this point, too, and made his way down to the bunker with the others.

“G’night, Gordonnnn…” Alyx hummed sleepily as she slipped into her room. He couldn’t help but let out a small laugh and shake his head. He kind of hoped they’d get to do that more often.

Barney waved before making his way down the hall to his own room. “Night, Gordon.”

“Night.”

And so he was left alone in his room, and it was time for him to take off the suit. Possibly for the last time in a while.

He gazed down at his arms. It had so many dents and scratches that it nearly made him shudder. Every manhack blade, stray bullet, or alien claw that had chipped away at the suit could’ve penetrated his own skin. Some of them still did, but he knew he owed his entire life to this armor. There was literally no way that he could be standing here if he was forced to go out into the chaos in regular clothes. He wouldn’t have made it fifteen minutes after the Incident in his work uniform.

He wasn’t exactly the manliest man there ever was. He was average height at best, was on a recently-graduated college student’s diet of nothing but garbage, and never had much of a reason to work out except to keep with Black Mesa’s mandatory fitness regimens. He was soft, and he knew it, and prior to all of this he wouldn’t have thought much of it besides a little shame for the good of his health. _Remember: more lives than yours may depend on your fitness._

But when he wore the HEV suit? He was powerful. He was a little taller, a little stronger, a little faster, a little more capable than he was without it. Despite the things that had happened to him while he donned it, it made him feel safe. Without it, he just felt naked—much too exposed to danger. He very rarely took it off, but he supposed that now was the right time to do so. Taking a deep breath, he pressed a hidden button on the front of the suit, causing it to emit a hydraulic _hissss_ as the compression on his body released and all of the life support functions retracted, allowing him to basically crack it open like a little plastic Easter egg. “Thank you for using the HEV Mark IV protective system. Have a very safe day.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he sighed, removing the front part of the exoskeleton and stepping out of it. He placed the two halves together and hoisted them up onto the table before removing his gloves and the rest of the cloth bodysuit he wore underneath, throwing it aside for him to wash later, as it desperately needed. God, he wanted a shower, but he was just too damn tired tonight. Changing into a t-shirt and a new pair of underwear, he slid under the cold sheets of his bed and settled himself in. _Why did they always keep Black Mesa at 68 degrees?_ he wondered, realizing just how silly and random the thought was. It’s not like it was remotely pleasant like the tram’s announcer always claimed. It was freezing—he was _always freezing_ unless he was in the suit—and it made it that much more unbearable when you had to go up to the surface and have the cruel New Mexico sun blast its rays at you. _I wonder how much money they spent on air conditioning every month. Even one or two degrees probably could’ve saved them thousands._

He snorted quietly. _Maybe I should’ve become administrator._

For a second, it was almost as if Gordon had entirely forgotten his situation. He was back to being 27, not 27 going on 150. He really did at one point see himself becoming the administrator of Black Mesa one day. It was a big dream, yes, and one that would take his entire career to achieve, but he wasn’t one to stop trying just because someone told him it was impossible. He wanted that so badly back then. His work was all he cared about. Who knew it would take being stuck smack-dab in the middle of the end of the world for him to realize that life was about more than late nights and research papers? Since the day in middle school when he decided he wanted to be a scientist, nothing had held him back. Straight As in all his classes (excluding gym… but he still blames the coach for that), acceptance into MIT right after high school, applying for the job at Black Mesa as soon as he graduated—he was not the kind of person to waste time achieving his goals. If he wanted it, then he-

“Oh, shit,” he muttered. “Do I still have to pay my student loans? …I… I guess not…” 

A pause, and then a small laugh. “Well that’s a relief.”

That was a sick joke, and he knew it, but he didn’t care all that much. Based on the way his life had been going, a couple hundred thousand dollars of debt would just be the icing on a very, very tall cake made up of problems. He sighed again, the taste of alcohol still lingering in the back of his throat, and moved his arm to rest underneath his pillow. This had actually been a really great night. Setting aside the fact that it was hard for him to believe that any of it was actually happening, and even harder to let himself enjoy it, it had been good. The apocalypse didn’t bring many moments of happiness apart from victory after a particularly gruesome battle against some Striders, or a split second of energy shared between him and Alyx in the form of teasing smiles. Tonight, joy and relief was practically bursting from the doors of White Forest, and he was sure that every little rebel camp that heard the announcements over the radio could barely contain it either. He got to witness what was apparently a first—Alyx taking more than a sip of alcohol. Much more than just a sip. Alyx, the kind of person he knew to never let down her guard, never be anything but completely prepared for whatever came at her next, actually let her walls fall for a few hours and danced with everyone. It was a sight to behold, that was for sure. He wished he’d been able to do the same. _Soon._

It had to be nearing six in the morning at this point, the sun was definitely shining over the trees now, and the only thing Gordon was completely sure on was that he was utterly exhausted. His bruised, aching, fatigued body could’ve been one with the old mattress at this point. No matter how much thinking his mind wanted to do, the weight of his eyelids and his body’s inability to crave anything else except for sleep, for once, won. 

\---

_Bang, bang, bang!_

“Wakey-wakey.”

“Mmmmph,” moaned Gordon into his pillow as a blurry figure barged its way into the dark room. It was just Barney, he realized after a moment of squinting.

“Sorry to wake you, Doc, but I figured you wouldn’t want anyone to let you sleep past noon,” he continued. “I brought you some tea.”

He threw his head back down onto his pillow with a _fwump_. “Oh, god…”

“Yeah, I know. Imagine how the others are feeling.”

With a long, deep sigh, Gordon forced himself upright, running a hand over his face and through his hair. He swung his feet over the side of the bed and a small alarm went off inside him when they met the cold concrete floor. Barney handed him a mug full of warm green tea, which he gratefully accepted, but sat a second down on the old dresser on the opposite wall.

“Why are there two mugs?” he asked groggily.

“Ahh, that’s the catch.” _There was a catch to begin with?_ “After how much she drank last night there’s no way I’m goin’ in there and poking the beast. You get the job of waking up Alyx.”

Barney’s mission assignment was quickly met with a death glare from his barely-awake friend. His gaze was even sharper without his glasses. “You’re kidding.”

“You really think I want to be the first thing hung-over Alyx sees in the morning?” he chortled. “Besides, she’s got a thing for you. She won’t be as mean.”

A thing for him. God, that was another thing he just couldn’t wrap his head around. He remembered the picture on Eli’s desk of her when she was just a baby, remembered the certain way he lit up when he talked about his precious daughter. And now, things had gone just plain weird, and he was twenty years in the future and there she was, all grown up and filled out and… into him. It was so strange. He didn’t know if his brain even had the means to process how backwards all of it was, let alone delve into the question of whether he had feelings for her, too.

Gordon hoisted himself off the bed, accompanied with a shake of his head in reply to Barney’s musing. “Fine, I’ll do it. Since you’re too chicken,” he teased as he retrieved his glasses and put them back in their rightful position on his face.

“Atta boy. I owe you one, really.” He gave Gordon a pat on the shoulder before turning to leave.

“…Wait. I just…” Gordon’s brow furrowed into an expression of comical bemusement. “I just realized… I don’t own any pants.”

“Ha! You’re gonna have to wear regular clothes like the rest of us now!”

He smiled a little, causing the skin around his eyes to crinkle a bit, and took a sip of tea. “I guess I am.”

With that, Barney assured Gordon he’d find him a spare pair of pants somewhere and left on that assignment, leaving him standing alone in the room. He flicked the light on and sat back down on the bed, mug of steaming tea still in hand. The HEV suit’s dull orange metal still reflected some of the overhead light in a subdued way. It was covered in dirt, and in the light he could see better than ever before how many bumps, scratches, and gashes it truly had. It was like the suit of armor of an old knight, bearing small souvenirs from each battle, each new place, each room where he had very stupidly fallen right through the rotting floorboards much to everyone’s dismay. He couldn’t help but laugh. How did they possibly take him so seriously as their leader after all those sudden detours through the basement? They gave him so much praise and so much responsibility, and yet he wasn’t capable of walking on a wooden floor without hitting all the unsteady planks right on.

He didn’t have to wear it anymore. He wasn’t sure if that made him feel better. As amazing, invincible, _safe_ as the suit made him feel, it also dragged him farther away from his humanity than anything else. It made his skin impervious to harm, but in exchange, it made it unavailable to touch. Stepping into the HEV suit meant creating a disconnection between him and every other person around him. Maybe that’s why everyone thought so highly of him; they didn’t see Gordon Freeman, young physicist, they saw the Mysterious Free Man in his shiny orange-and-gray suit of armor, running around and kicking alien ass. 

What would they think of him now that he was done fostering that reputation? Would they keep worshipping him in the way they did before, lifting his name to legend as the man who saved the world? Or would he fade into obscurity and humanity as just another member of the science team, maybe a teacher? And which of the two did he truly prefer?

What would they think of him now that he was done being silent?

Maybe that was part of what made him so interesting to them.

“O-kay! Gotcha some clothes!” Barney had shouted suddenly as he entered the room again, this time with a small stack of shirts and pants in his arms. He set the pile down on the dresser next to the spare cup of tea. “We’ll work on getting you some more, but this should last ya.”

“Thank you, Barney,” Gordon replied gratefully, setting down his own mug in exchange for one of the pairs of pants. He unfurled the previously folded blue jeans and examined them for a moment—eh, a little big, but he wasn’t picky.

“Good luck with the beast,” the old security guard quipped with a wink as he left him to change.

“Right.” It only took him a few seconds to worm his way into the jeans and get them zipped, and after that he realized there was no more hesitating. Just because he was braver than Barney didn’t mean he wasn’t apprehensive about waking her up. He wished he could just let her sleep, but as his friend had currently predicted, he wouldn’t have appreciated being allowed to sleep in any later than he already had, and he knew for a fact it was the same with Alyx. She was always the one who stayed up late and got up early, and didn’t complain about it. He thought she might go into a coma if she let herself get more than five hours of sleep in one night. 

He picked up the two cups of tea and carefully shuffled his way a few paces down the corridor to where Alyx’s quarters were. After a bit of mental calculation to decide how on earth he was going to knock on the door with a mug in each hand, he decided on very carefully holding the handles of both in one hand and rapping with the other. 

“Oh my god, go away, please,” he heard from inside the room, almost certainly spoken from under a pillow.

“Sorry, Barney’s orders.”

There was a very long pause, broken by an equally long groan. “Come in…”


	3. Chapter 3

Alyx’s head throbbed. Whoever was disturbing her better have a damn good reason, and if it really was Barney’s doing, he was going to need to say his prayers. The door creaked open and she couldn’t quite see who it was with all of the light behind him. Most of the Resistance didn’t care to come down to her room and make themselves at home unless she’d invited them first. Only Barney, Dr. Kleiner, and, well, Gordon, but it was clearly none of the above.

The fluorescent lights that came blaring in from the hall were much too bright for her preference right now, but the only other option besides sitting in pitch darkness (which did actually sound pretty good at that point) was the light next to her bed. She reluctantly chose to reach up and turn that on while the mysterious figure closed the door behind him. The orange glow of the lamp hit her face and caused her to slam her eyes shut with a wince. “Ow.”

“I know the feeling,” the man chuckled, sitting down on the edge of the bed. The feeling of the lamp deciding to send a jolt of pain through her head like she had just stood a little too close to a Combine grenade and gotten the wind knocked out of her was too much of a distraction for her to open her eyes and finally figure out who this was. 

When she did get her bearings, though, and finally squinted them open, they immediately rose from sleepy confusion to utter dumbfoundedness. “Gordon! Oh my god, what…? You can…?”

“Oh, right, you were pretty far gone at that point. Uh…” He looked a twinge embarrassed, with his gaze focused on something on the floor. He extended his hand to her and she realized that it had a cup of warm tea in it. She accepted it, propping herself up on an elbow to drink it, not breaking her look of disbelief. “Yeah, I can speak.”

She had heard plenty of stories from her family about Gordon, many in which he said things. But after the day he had arrived and she had remarked what a quiet man he was, she just assumed it was hyperbole and he had been using sign language. It made sense to her that no one had ever bothered to bring it up, and the more time she spent with him the more it set in that he just… didn’t talk. But he could, and he was. And it was a really nice voice. Warm, not too loud or brash, smooth, sweet. It still contained the crackle of morning, indicating to her that he hadn’t been awake much longer than she had. She had never wondered much what he sounded like, but now that she knew, something about the realization reassured something in her. Maybe it was the fact that this war-hardened man sitting on her bed right now sounded like a normal human being.

Wait. She had heard that somewhere before. A vague memory trickled into her mind—something about the hill on top of the gate and stars. She took a long sip from her mug and let the moment sit. “I think I might remember that now,” she murmured.

“Headache?” 

How could he tell? Was it the way her entire face was scrunched up in a distressed scowl, or the fact that she couldn’t let her eyes veer anywhere near the lamp without snapping shut? “Ugh, like you wouldn’t believe.”

The mug thudded quietly against the wood of the night table as she sat it down, which coincided perfectly with the sound of a quiet laugh escaping Gordon’s mouth. Oh my god, he laughed. After hundreds of silent smiles and quick little grins, he had actually accompanied one of them with sound. Barely audible, but a beautiful sound nonetheless.

“If I hadn’t known any better, I would’ve mistaken you for a college student last night,” he teased.

“I feel like I vaguely remember the words ‘baby got back.’”

Another laugh, this one louder. “Good god!”

Throwing the discomfort away for a while, she smiled softly. “It’s weird to hear you laugh. Not _bad_ weird, just… weird.”

“It’s weird for me, too.” She reached for her mug again as she listened to him speak. “When the Resonance Cascade happened, I guess I… froze up. I went back to being a kid. And I had no idea it was going to take me months to get my voice back again.”

Alyx’s life was not short on fear. She wasn’t quite old enough at the time of the Black Mesa Incident to remember anything about it in particular, but what she did recall was a wave of negative emotions. She, thank God, didn’t remember her mother’s death, but she remembered her dad’s broken heart. She remembered Barney teaching her how to handle a gun when she was only ten years old. There was so much of her teen and adult life that she wished she didn’t remember—watching people get killed by the combine, families being torn apart, people getting ushered away to Nova Prospekt and never returning. She had lived her entire life in fear. 

But that was the thing. She had grown up like this; it had become as normal as it could possibly get. Gordon grew up in the 20th century. He grew up in a world that wasn’t inhabited by a million things that existed just to kill you. So imagine someone who was living a normal life before the Cascade in this soft and uneventful world, and then being in the middle of everything when it came crashing down. She figured she’d be hard-pressed to get a word out, too.

“That’s okay,” was really all she could say. And it seemed like the right thing, because he responded with a small nod, still looking down at the floor. Alyx decided to sit up all the way in the bed with her back leaned against the headboard. Her headache was anything but gone, but the tea and pleasant conversation helped. He helped. “This is really good tea, thanks.”  
“Oh, that was all Barney. He wouldn’t come in here and wake you up himself.” She cocked her eyebrow and he took it as a cue to elaborate. “He said he didn’t want to ‘poke the beast.’”

She shook her head and took another sip. “ _Mm-hmm_. Yeah, he was smart not to.”

This was such a nice little moment. Despite the throbbing pain in her head and her sore muscles, this had to have been the most soothing interaction she’d had with anyone in months. There was no one to chase, and no one chasing her. Things were calm. To her knowledge, she had nothing to do today, for the first time in… well, ever, really. There were probably some Combine soldiers barely straggling somewhere, and definitely zombies left wandering the wasteland, but for today, for now, in this little room, sitting next to Gordon, there wasn’t anything to worry about. Even in the lamp’s low-watt glow, his green eyes managed to glimmer. You wouldn’t be able to guess who he was or the kind of stress he was under just by looking into them; they were so young, so hopeful even in the face of everything they’d gone through. His face was scarred, scratched, scabbed over, damaged from falls and jolts and everything else. But not his eyes. They were unsullied by the apocalypse, and she loved it.

“You know what you need?” Gordon suddenly spoke up, breaking the silence. “Carbs.”

“…Carbs,” she echoed with a slightly confused tone.

“You feel like garbage because your blood sugar took a nosedive. We need to get some sugar back in you.”

She couldn’t help but laugh a little bit. “Okaaay…? You want breakfast?”

“Honestly, yes. I’m famished.”

“Then let’s go see what we’ve got in the kitchen.”

After quickly (but not too quickly) slipping her jeans on and slicking her hair back behind her usual dark brown headband, the two of them exited the room, tea still in hand, making their way down to the dormitory kitchen. The one here wasn’t nearly as big and nice as the one back at Black Mesa East, but she was grateful to have it regardless. Usually, the kitchen and the dining area outside of it would be bustling with people at mealtimes, full of chatter—but from what Alyx could tell from outside, it seemed oddly quiet, especially for the occasion.

Gordon seemed to notice it too. “It sounds like you’re not the only one with a hangover.”

“Shut up,” she laughed in reply before realizing what she had said. “Well, actually, don’t.”

As she opened the door to the mess hall, though, it became apparent that his observation was entirely accurate. Plenty of people were in here, and the sound of clinking utensils filled the room, but the sound of voices was significantly hushed. Some could be seen miserably hunched over cups of coffee, others slowly eating their lunches and trying to keep them down. Walking through the room to reach the kitchen, small conversations could be heard murmured amongst tables of people, mostly talking about how much they hated alcohol and the various hangover cures they no longer had the means to use post-war. Attention did quickly come to the HEV-less Gordon as he and Alyx walked, though, turning topics over to just how surprising it was to see him that way. Being the center of attention was one thing when it was about how amazing you were—she predicted it didn’t feel quite so great when the people who previously worshipped you were now whispering about how skinny and short you looked without your armor.

A pair of Vortigaunts could be seen shuffling around the kitchen as they entered, one preparing and one cleaning. She felt so much gratitude for their willingness to help in any way they possibly could, especially considering she wouldn’t be alive without them. A pit dropped in her stomach. She only wished they could have saved her father.

God, she wished so badly that he could see everything now. All of this was what he spent his life working towards, trying to stop what he was involved in starting. He was so close—he was so _damn_ close—to saving everything, he could’ve seen her off on their trip to the Arctic, he could’ve been there on the radio every time something went wrong. He could’ve been the first one to hug her upon her return. She should’ve paid more attention to Dog when he went running away. She could’ve stopped it. She could’ve stopped it-

“You alright?”

Alyx suddenly realized that Gordon had been staring at her for a minute, and quickly grew aware of the fact that her face was fixed in a deep frown as she drowned in her thoughts. She immediately tried to assume a less concerning expression. “Oh, yeah. Still tired.”

 _Did he buy it?_ Yeah, it looked like he did. He seemed to stare for another half second before nodding and looking away. “Me too.”

“Breakfast’ll wake us up.” She approached a counter against the wall where shelves had been stacked to form a makeshift pantry. Fresh fruits and vegetables were stacked neatly by whoever had last gone out to the gardens, though the last remaining watermelon of the batch was labeled with a sticky note: FOR LAMARR. DO NOT EAT! Rolling her eyes playfully, she reached for a handful out of the box of strawberries and moved on past another counter where a Vort stood, heating something on the gas stove.

“The Alyx Vance awakens,” he remarked after catching sight of her.

“Morning, Radael. Or,” she paused, glancing over at a clock on the wall, “afternoon, I guess.” She stepped around him to reach a cabinet wherein sat bowls and plates, taking one of the former to hold her strawberries. Suddenly, she stopped, and took a deep breath, eyes lighting up. “I smell fresh bread.”

“Yes, there is a loaf in the oven now. It is nearly done. The Alyx Vance would be appreciated to check on it.”

Alyx wasted no time in setting her bowl down and making her way to the oven where, surely enough, a beautiful-looking loaf of bread was baking. Carefully cracking the door, she peered in to find that it had turned wonderfully golden brown, the aroma even stronger than before. “I think it’s ready,” she assured the Vortigaunt as she reached for a towel to retrieve the pan. 

Gordon had come around the counter while she was taking the bread out of the oven and had parked himself in front of the sink to peel carrots. She carefully swung around, letting out a “whoa” after nearly hitting him with the hot pan, finally deciding on the tabletop to set it down instead of colliding with his exposed arm. Not only did the HEV suit protect him, it made him louder than the average person, something that she had grown accustomed to listening for. His shoeless feet made significantly less noise against the concrete of the bunker’s floors than his usual, clunky boots.

As though he had been thinking the same thing after the close call, he piped up, not taking his eyes off the knife he was using to peel. “I might have to keep wearing that suit around just so you don’t accidentally kill me.”

“It would help if I could hear you moving,” she agreed jokingly, turning around to face him. He still had his back to her at the sink. He looked so… normal. Despite scars and bruises, he looked like such a perfectly _normal_ individual, almost like he didn’t belong in the world they lived in. Well, she supposed be really didn’t. How he had arrived from twenty years in the past looking exactly like he did before the Cascade, he hadn’t explained, and she had sort of decided not to question it. Part of her wondered if he even knew, himself. Plenty of unexplainable things had happened to everyone, so maybe it wasn’t something worth exploring.

But there he was, just standing there in an old gray t-shirt and worn out jeans, peeling and chopping carrots in front of a sink, like nothing had ever happened to him in his entire life. The complete mundanity of the task seemed to come to him naturally as if he had done it every day for God knows how long. The mundane suited him, Alyx thought. He thrived in battle, and made an excellent warrior, which saved her hide countless times. But for some reason, it was just so refreshing to see him do something so simple. He was a normal guy, not a savior. His look of concentration paralleled the one he wore in circumstances such as the many rooms full of laser triggers, but lacking that visible knowledge that failure would result in death. He looked kind of happy—happy to be focusing his energy on something that _didn’t_ mean life or death. She really enjoyed seeing that in him.

 _When was the last time he had been happy?_ she thought to herself. Really, truly happy, not just for a fleeting second? Was he happy before Black Mesa? From Barney’s stories, it seemed like he had been. She hoped with everything she had that he would be able to find that again. They all had a chance to now that the war was over.

“Did I do something?” Gordon asked hesitantly. Oh, shit, she had been staring.

“Wh- uhhh…” _Great, nice job, Alyx._ “No, I just. I needed… the knife.”

She watched as his eyes panned away from her, towards a wooden block full of perfectly good knives sitting a few feet to the left of the sink, then back to her. _Awesome! You’re an idiot!_ “Oh! Didn’t even see those. Thanks.”

Mentally kicking herself and keeping her eyes far, far away from Gordon, Alyx approached the place on the counter where she had left her bowl of strawberries and picked one up to slice off the stem and halve them. She was mortified. Gordon freakin’ Freeman, making her feel like a little girl with a school crush. Horrifying. She kept her eyes down, not daring to send even another glance his way right now. She could feel the amused energy coming off of him, and she swore that if she would’ve had the gall to look up, she would’ve seen a tantalizing grin on his face, which was something that only embarrassed her more.

“The Freeman speaks,” Radael observed, thankfully interrupting the awkward silence. 

“Yes, I do,” Gordon replied politely, a small laugh almost creeping in. This caused the mess hall to slowly descend to almost complete silence—the human voice was incredibly quiet and unnoticeable compared to that of a Vortigaunt. People across the entire room seemed to snap out of their fatigue and remove their attention from their meals to instead stare at the man who had just spoken, looking like they were expecting him to say something else. That was enough to cause Alyx to pop her head up again, and then turn over to look at him, too.

“Looks like you’ve got a few listeners.”

He looked just about as mortified as she did. Though Gordon never spoke in their presence before today, he was never one to hesitate on anything else. Right now, he looked like a deer caught in headlights. The room was heavy with anticipation of what he was going to say next. What words of wisdom would he bestow upon them now that he was back from saving the world, now that he had shed his powerful orange suit and was among them?

The answer was none. He blinked for a second and then looked back down at his carrots.

Alyx furrowed her brow with sympathy, and after a moment of consideration decided to reach out and touch his arm. “It’s okay.”

No answer, just the sound of chopping carrots and conversations picking up again.

With perfect timing once again, the Vort turned to face the two humans with the pot he had been heating. “We have made beans and rice. Please get a vessel so you may eat it.”

“Thank you so much, Radael,” Alyx sighed in relief, going around Gordon to retrieve two bowls from the cabinet from which she had gotten the first. She gave the Vort an appreciative smile as he ladled the food from the cooking pot into the two bowls. “Oh, I almost forgot about the bread!”

Careful not to burn herself, she went back to the still-warm pan full of delicious bread and gently pried them apart, revealing the perfectly golden-brown underside of the loaf. A thick slice was cut off and set aside for each bowl of rice—Alyx made sure to take the heel for herself, an optimally sturdy raft for spoonfuls of beans. “C’mon, Gordon,” she nudged, throwing her slice of bread onto the top of her bowl, grabbing a spoon and her strawberries, and heading for a table.

After she arrived at a small table against the wall of the moderate-sized room, she directed her gaze back to the area from which she had just departed, not only seeing Gordon standing at the edge of the kitchen, food in hand, but nearly everyone else in the cafeteria staring him down. He looked painfully uncomfortable to a point where Alyx could barely stand to look at him herself in fear of the embarrassment transferring over to her. She raised her bowl of strawberries to grab his attention and then gestured with her hand for him to follow as she left for the door.

“God, thank you,” he finally said once they were out of earshot of the mess hall. He sounded incredibly relieved.

“No problem. _Apparently_ , no one has manners all of a sudden.”

He sighed a very short sigh, almost a huff. “I don’t know what got into me back there. I’m not normally like that.”

“Look, I wouldn’t be great having a crowd of people staring at me, either. That’s terrifying!”

“More terrifying than getting shot at?”

“…No. Just a different kind,” she decided.

Eventually they reached her room once again, a much quieter and darker place for them to eat. No horrible fluorescent lights, no gawking—just the two of them and their food. Both of them found comfort in that. Alyx, after placing her meal down on her bedside table, quickly straightened the covers on her bed and chose that as her seat. Gordon seemed to hover for a few moments before choosing to sit down in the same spot as this morning, next to her. 

“Well, the tea is cold, but I don’t really care,” Alyx announced after taking a sip of her half-empty mug, in an attempt to be her usual level of nonchalant. It was very hard with him sitting so close to her. Usually, it wasn’t that big of a deal—hell, she had just gotten through spending weeks with him, and she was pretty much fine then. It was the lack of metal separating the two of them. If she wanted to, and she wanted to, she could just reach out and touch him, and feel _him_ instead of the cold, hard suit. And there wasn’t anything keeping her from doing that now, either. It’s not like she had something else to focus on besides whatever minor mission she’d probably be sent on, a refreshingly menial task compared to the trek from which they’d just returned. By the looks of things, there probably weren’t going to be anymore big distractions anytime soon. While that was a good thing, it was also bad. Bad for her focus.

She honestly just could not tell what he was thinking. Sure, she could usually read him on the warfront, catching nonverbal cues and recognizing when he was hurt or was ready to go again. But that was a whole lot different than knowing what was going on inside his head. Emotionally. Here she was, a respectable, powerful, strong young woman, a head figure in the Resistance and one of the people who saved the world for good, and she was worried about whether her crush liked her back. Because she just could not tell. And he was just so different when there was no call to action to be answered.

The clinking of their spoons against the ceramic bowls was the only sound filling the room. Just as she had predicted, the firmness of the heel of her bread slice did its job nicely. The bread was perfectly soft and moist, the beans and rice were, well, beans and rice, and the strawberries, though kind of unfitting with the rest of the meal, were a good refreshment. She felt she’d headed pretty well Gordon’s suggestion of getting her blood sugar back up. That headache was kind of starting to go away now.

Her spoon scooped up an unexpectedly large chunk in the bowl, and she brought it towards her face to examine it closer. “I think there’s headcrab meat in this.”

Gordon had just popped a big bite into his mouth, almost ready to chew before Alyx’s observation. The look on his face as he processed her words was indescribable, like he had no idea what to do with the information at hand. He stayed like that for a moment before deciding he was going to slowly chew it anyway. This caused her to burst out laughing. “It was about time you tried it!”

“Would’ve been nice to be warned…” he mumbled with most of it still in his mouth.

Still laughing, she went ahead and ate the spoonful of headcrab. “It’s honestly not that bad, though, is it?”

He chewed for a few seconds before nodding slightly. “Not the worst thing I’ve ever eaten.”

“Right?” She washed the bite down with another sip of tea and a strawberry slice. “I don’t remember the last time I had real meat. I was probably super young.”

“This actually tastes a lot like beef,” he admitted. “Just stringier.”

“I don’t know how I feel about that,” she laughed, and so did he.

“Me neither.”

She wanted him to laugh more. That was going to be a goal of hers from now on. Make Gordon laugh as much as possible—firstly, to make him happier, because as she’d noted earlier, he needed that. And secondly, so she could hear it, and see it. The way it lit up his entire face, made him seem a little less tired. She wanted to make that happen as many times a day as it possibly could. She was so grateful that that laugh was just for her for now.


	4. Chapter 4

Something was different in both of them today. Gordon had seen Alyx cheerful plenty of times—gosh, it was basically a staple of her personality to be—but today, there was just something new about it. Maybe a more relaxed air about it, which made sense, of course. Was that it?

Whatever it was, he liked it.

When he had first stepped into her room and she had turned on her lamp, his stomach lurched. The dull, golden glow cast a perfect amount of light on her face, highlighting every strand of her black hair that was usually kept so neat, but in that moment was untamed and free to fall all over her forehead. That was weird, must’ve just been leftover from last night. It had been a good while since he drank, after all, and vodka was notorious for being hard on your stomach. The drop had happened again when she smiled at him with her sleepy expression, and the creases around her mouth turned into the prominent lines that always made an appearance alongside her smile. He didn’t even realize he’d noticed that before until then. What a strange coincidence.

Something had to be wrong, though. A lot of things had been causing that unpleasant feeling in his core that morning.

Her telling him to shut up, but not actually; the roll of her eyes when she noticed Kleiner’s note on the watermelon, the moment she smelled the bread in the oven, how he had caught her staring at him for some reason, when she gently touched his arm… For some strange reason, it seemed like every time they interacted, every time she moved, he got this… feeling.

And then his stupid MIT-educated brain connected the dots.

They were back in that dim light now, and she looked beautiful. Just a little more put together than she was before, her hair now back in her signature headband, but the old, black knit sweater she had woken up in was still draped gracefully around her. It looked soft from many years of use. If it hadn’t been incredibly uncalled for, he probably would’ve reached out and felt it. Something about the yellow glow reflected right off her eyes, bringing out the amber flecks hidden within the brown even more than usual.

Her eyes darted up from her food to him. “You want a strawberry?”

“Oh, sure,” he replied, and she handed him a slice. He popped it in his mouth and instantly the sweetness and texture lifted him. “Mm. I have never appreciated fruit more.”

“We don’t want you getting scurvy, now, Dr. Freeman,” she teased. Lurch.

He laughed. “What are we, pirates?”

“No, really, scurvy was a big problem a few years ago. Our gardens weren’t doing so well, and the Combine rations weren’t exactly known for their nutrition.”

“Huh. Well, I’ll make sure I get plenty of Vitamin C, then.” He took a big, crunchy bite out of a carrot for comedic effect, which seemed to work, as Alyx responded with a hearty cackle. _Lurch._

“Carrots don’t have Vitamin C, you know.”

“What, really?” He pretended to be dumbfounded. “I thought it stood for Carrot.”

Another amazing laugh. “I liked you better when you didn’t talk so much.”

“Oh, alright,” he shrugged, and went back to eating his breakfast. In silence.

“Oh, come on. I didn’t mean that.”

It took everything in him to hold back a smile as she scowled right at him and he kept on eating his food. The rapport they had before was always fun enough when she was the one doing all the talking—now that he had that power, it was only going to get better. They were only going to get closer, he realized.

“Gordon.”

He looked back over at her, mid-bite, as if he had no idea why she was being so short with him. He took a nice, slow chomp out of the carrot and chewed it, blinking at her, face completely blank. “Wow,” she huffed. “I didn’t realize you were a five-year-old this whole time.”

The smile was getting pretty hard to hold back now, so he quickly went for his cup of tea to try and hide it as it crept its way onto his face. He watched out of the corner of his eye as she gathered up her food and went to stand up.

“Well, if you’re gonna do that, I guess I’ll just _leave_ ,” she said dramatically.

Well that just wouldn’t do. He laughed and reached out for her. “No, wait, come back!”

“Uh-huh.” She shot him a sly grin and sat back in her place on the bed. “That’s what I thought.”

“I’ll keep talking if you give me another one of those strawberries.” As he reached his hand over to grab one out of the bowl, she quickly smacked it away.

“Get your grubby hands away from my breakfast, Freeman!”

She made him feel so… so… ahh, what was it?

It wasn’t atypical to find a young Gordon sitting in front of the television set as a young child when he wasn’t busy running around outside and poking worms and bugs. When the channel wasn’t tuned in to children’s programming, most likely it displayed reruns of ancient shows, one he remembered the most being I Love Lucy. _“Lucy, I’m home!”_ the husband would always exclaim as he walked through the doors after his day at work, greeting his wife and whatever strange things she was always up to. For some reason, she made him feel like that specific emotion, like he could always come home to her. He was only now realizing that that feeling wasn’t just platonic.

They sat there for a while longer, slowly finishing the rest of their meal and jabbering on about anything and everything—how Gordon could’ve sworn he saw Magnusson dancing last night, the last time he ate meat that _wasn’t_ headcrab, and Alyx’s vow that she would never, ever drink again. So many of those sweet laughs were produced, each of course accompanied by the lines around her mouth, almost like parentheses that showed you to _look right there_ so you wouldn’t miss it. How he had gone so long without noticing the way he made her feel, he had no idea. Perhaps it just wasn’t a thing his brain could possibly prioritize when they were in such danger, or maybe he was just an idiot. Maybe both. Probably both.

“Can I tell you something?” he began, scraping the last bits of rice off the bottom of his bowl.

She cocked her head in intrigue. “Of course.”

“You know how everyone in the Resistance always does that… that thing? You know, the,” and he held his hands up for effect, assuming an expression of fake wonder, “‘Wow, it’s Gordon Freeman! I’m going to follow you!’ thing?”

“Uh-huh.” She was clearly amused at the ridiculous voice he’d chosen to represent the rebels.

“I hate it. I really just can’t stand it at all.”

“Oh, you poor thing,” Alyx teased, her mouth turned down in a pout. “Everyone worships you, how hard that must be!”

He scoffed and rebutted, “You know I don’t mean it like that.”

“I know. No, I get it. And now everyone’s being… weird about it.” She sat her now empty bowls on the nightstand and readjusted herself to a more laid-back position before continuing. “I guess you just… My dad and Kleiner were really confused after you up and disappeared. And they always knew you’d find a way back, so they wanted everyone to know who they could trust when you showed up again. They just had no idea that it was going to be a couple decades later and that you were going to end up a local legend…”

He couldn’t help but laugh. “The Opener of the Way, huh? That really pissed Breen off.”

“Yeah, it sure did, didn’t it!” she chuckled. “You gave everyone a lot of hope. I don’t think a lot of us would’ve made it as long as we did without that.”

“I understand. I do.”

“That doesn’t make it any less unfair to you.” The look on her face as she locked eyes with him was somber, and loving, and so understanding. God, she’d really just gone and gotten to know him, hadn’t she? All he could really do was nod in return.

She took his dishes out of his hands and stacked them with her own as she stood up from the bed. “I’m gonna take this back to the kitchen and then see if Kleiner’s got anything for me to do today. Something’s bound to be broken after last night.”

“Oh, okay,” he replied, trying his best to cover up his disappointment. “I’ll have to see if I can make myself useful.”

“You’re always useful, Gordon.” She looked back at him with a caring smile. Hello again, stomach lurch. “If anything, he’s probably gonna be ecstatic he doesn’t have to send you out so much anymore.”

Isaac was an absolutely brilliant scientist, definitely only getting better at his job (and more eccentric) as he aged over the years. He had previously been very unfamiliar with Judith, and the impressions she had left on him, and on Alyx, upon their first few interactions had left him suspicious. However, she had truly proved herself to be an invaluable component of their team in so many ways. After all, they never could’ve tracked down the Borealis or even known of its existence without her savvy decision to risk her image to gather the information. The team he had gotten the opportunity to work with was world-class—the idea of learning under them again, catching up on all of the incredible advancements they’d made over the decades he’d been gone, taking advantage of all of the amazing Combine technology and setting up humanity to thrive and rebuild everything twice as great as it was before… now that was something he wouldn’t mind being worshipped for.

It was nothing short of a complete tragedy that Eli wasn’t here to lead. He saw his daughter here now, looking and behaving so much like him, with so much stubbornness and initiative. Before the Black Mesa Incident Dr. Vance had shown that fiery motivation he could see in Alyx today, rarely stopping to rest to achieve what he needed to achieve. Even his old age or the loss of his leg didn’t slow him down, and Gordon noted to himself that if he could’ve gotten right back up after his death, he would’ve gone right back to work. He also knew that he carried so much guilt for what happened at the facility. Everyone did, including himself. It was nearly impossible not to feel at least some responsibility for the events of that day, as it was the comprehensive failure of many of the Anomalous Materials team that led to the catastrophe, coupled with plenty of supernatural interference, he had later learned. The fact that Eli died with so much regret, having worked so hard for such a significant part of his life to fix what he’d been instrumental in causing, broke Gordon’s heart, for both of the Vances. That only motivated him even more to get back into what he did best: not shooting or climbing or running or saving the world, but research.

With another glance back at him, Alyx exited the room, the dishes clinking gently with each of her steps down the corridor to the dining hall. He couldn’t have possibly voiced just how grateful he was he didn’t have to go back to the room full of hungover gawkers. He knew he’d have to come up with something spectacular and Messiah-worthy eventually, but he wasn’t exactly in any hurry. It was high time to go start the day instead of creepily continuing to sit in Alyx’s bedroom, so he hoisted himself up from the bed and left, closing the door behind him. To his right he could see her a few meters down the hall chatting with one of the rebels leaving the mess hall. He smiled a little bit to himself, watching only for a moment as she distantly laughed in the polite conversation, and then turned left to go back to his own room.

It looked like Barney had left him a pair of work boots while he’d been off with Alyx, which he greatly appreciated considering the only other footwear he currently had was the boots of the HEV suit, which, though protective and functional, were the least comfortable pair of shoes he’d ever worn. He grabbed the tan, clearly aging boots off the dresser where they’d been left and sat down on his bed to try them on. One of the laces was missing its aglet and as a result had frayed significantly, making it a little more of a challenge to tie them properly, but he couldn’t complain. Whoever was the previous owner of these boots had done their job of breaking them in well; they were incredibly comfortable. He figured he was ready to head out now. The HEV suit’s parts still lay where he left them, but there was no need for them today. He was going to have to go out without them.

Vulnerable, with only a t-shirt and jeans to separate him from everyone else. He’d be okay. 

\---

Hearing Gordon’s voice, hearing him laugh and poke fun at her during breakfast, that was the best way Alyx could’ve possibly started her day. Her usual lift ride up to the hangar was made more interesting with the lighter feeling she had today; she was so used to ribbing him, she was completely unprepared for him to do it right back, and it was wonderful. The image of how dorky his smile was as he laughed was all that filled her mind as she rose the lift up, and continued to linger once she got off and began her walk to find Kleiner.

“Hey, Alyx!” The image popped like a bubble and she turned to find the source of the familiar voice somewhere to her right. It was, of course, Barney, walking down a hall towards her. “Good to see you on your feet.”

“Oh, don’t give me that, you coward,” she laughed.

He shrugged defensively as she began to walk away, and quickly followed. “What did I do?”

“Gordon told me _everything_ you said this morning, Barn. Thanks for the tea, though.”

“You’re so _welcome_!” he replied dramatically. “See, I was looking out for both of us. I wanted _you_ to have a good morning, and I wanted _me_ to not get kicked in the nuts.”

“You better watch it, then.”

“Oh, I always am. With you around, you kiddin’?” He chuckled when she rolled her eyes. “Hey, you got an assignment yet?”

“No, I was just about to go see Dr. Kleiner.”

“I think he’s busy talkin’ to Mossman right now.”

Sighing, she stopped in her tracks. “Of course he is.”

“You know what you could do though?” Alyx looked up at him puzzledly. “Those old beer bottles are still waitin’ to get thrown out.”

“I completely forgot about that!” she beamed. “I bet Dog’s going to love those.”

Barney let out a sweet laugh, patting her on the shoulder. “Go have fun, kiddo.”

As she waved a quick goodbye and ran off to go find Dog, he sighed and chuckled dryly at himself. “I’m so old.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote the first five chapters of this fic in about five days. My plan was to refrain from publishing it until it was completely finished, but I'm kind of hitting a wall with chapter six (most likely from writing 14k words in five freakin' days), so I thought a small break and an opportunity for positive feedback would be a good thing for me. I promise I'm not going to let this sit here without me finishing it, and if you're reading this well past March 23rd, 2019 without another chapter posted after this, then it's high time for you to start bombarding me with messages!

_“Whoa, is that Freeman? I never realized he was that skinny!”_

Gordon was greeted with exactly what he had expected when he ascended the lift into the hangar. The later into the afternoon it got the less miserable all of White Forest’s residents and workers felt, and that, coupled with much less dire need for them to always be moving, created an environment just begging for something to fill the time. It looked like gossip was the answer. He did look and feel awfully scrawny without the suit on, that he’d absolutely admit. He had enough muscle to get through the occasional endurance test at Black Mesa, and then, obviously, enough to crawl his way through more air vents and pipes he ever thought he’d see the inside of in his life. But he was definitely not the most buff guy in the world. Gordon probably would’ve gawked at himself, too; that he could excuse.

_“Brendan told me he was talking in the kitchen earlier.”_

That was the thing that bothered him.

How was he supposed to deal with that? Everyone could say whatever they wanted about his weight or his height or his posture now that he was walking around without the suit, that was understandable. It wasn’t any less strange for him than it was for anyone else. His voice, though, that was something that clearly anyone who didn’t know him before could not have anticipated. Their silent hero had spoken, and it wasn’t in a grand speech to the masses to give them hope and further show off how amazing he was, it was just to have a normal conversation. Did he owe anyone an explanation?

Alyx would tell him no, he didn’t, and he really wanted to believe that. He had just as much a right as anyone else to use his voice for whatever he wanted, especially since it had been stolen from him for so long. How pathetic it would be for him to have to explain to an entire population that the man who helped save them from certain doom only acted so stoic and mighty because, in reality, he was too terrified to speak. A strategy that had never worked for him before popped up in the back of his head: maybe if he just ignored it, it would go away. Maybe it would this time, though. Maybe if he just acted like he’d been fine this entire time and that nothing was out of the ordinary, people would give up on whispering about him and would just accept it. It might work.

He decided that was probably the only thing he had the courage to do. _Fake it ‘til you make it._

Other than the chatter of the various rebels, which he was desperately trying to drown out now, the hangar was very quiet. For the first time in probably quite a long, long time, no noise came from the outside except for the faint chirping of birds—although, if he listened closely, he swore he could hear the sound of glass smashing somewhere up above, and maybe even Alyx’s laughter. He couldn’t stop a grin from sneaking its way onto his face. On the inside, nothing was really happening. There had to be people down in the old, dilapidated silo where he’d dealt with plenty more antlions than he’d ever wanted to (and experienced a few other horrifying things that he didn’t care to recall today), and he knew somewhere in this place, Dr. Magnusson was absolutely griping at some poor sap like he always did. Gordon wondered if he was similar to a shark, since they always had to continue swimming in order to stay alive—perhaps Magnusson had to keep yelling or he’d drop dead.

Where was Isaac? He was bound to be somewhere nearby, and he really wanted to talk with him about what his role in things would look like once they figured out what the Resistance’s next steps were now that there was little resisting left to do. Surely their best use of him wasn’t to continue throwing him out into the battlefield? That suit could fit anyone who decided they wanted to wear it, and there were plenty of people better at combat than he was. The only thing that kept him alive this long was luck and the right equipment.

How he appreciated the fact that Alyx had given him the passwords to the doors so he could move through the airlocks without someone escorting him. This allowed him to look for Kleiner himself rather than waiting around—or, even worse, having to ask someone of his whereabouts. That old room where they’d first played back the transmission Dr. Mossman had so cleverly snuck to them, that was probably where Isaac was now, and that was where he would check first.

And surely enough, he was indeed, and so was Judith. “Ah, speak of the devil,” Isaac remarked as Gordon had entered the room.

“Am I interrupting something?” he asked.

The older man shook his head. “No, no, not at all. We were simply discussing the Borealis mission. In fact, Judith was just recalling to me some of your braver actions on the ship.”

When the attention turned over to her, she looked both embarrassed and a bit confused. “Oh, well, it’s true. Dr. Freeman, I’m surprised to hear you speak, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever… Well, anyway,” she paused, seeming to want to throw out the awkward topic, much to Gordon’s immediate relief. “What did you need?”

“Oh, well, I just wanted to speak to Dr. Kleiner about something,” he explained.

“Ah, yes. I had wanted to see you, as well.” Isaac turned towards Gordon, adjusting his glasses before continuing. “Something else that Judith and I were discussing was, well… Now that you three are back and have had some time to settle in again, we wanted to hold a proper memorial for Eli.”

It had been about two months since his death. Alyx was doing surprisingly well at this point, or at least, she was pretending well. He vividly remembered the sound of her crying at night when she thought everyone else was asleep. Every other time she kept a brave face, doing what needed to be done, powering through the pain for the greater good, but in the middle of the night, when things were still, too stagnant to distract her from her grief, she cried. They spent several days in an old outpost in the Arctic wilderness as they waited for the Borealis to materialize. He remembered rising from sleep in the early, early hours of the morning, which wasn’t an uncommon occurrence considering how difficult it was to get even remotely comfortable in the HEV suit, and during those times it was hard to find a moment safe enough to take it off. Alyx was in one of the cots, and muffled crying could be heard as she tried to stifle it in her pillow. Gordon slowly rose from the floor, trying not to let the creaking of his armor wake Judith or the other team members, crept over to her bed, and gently sat down.

The sudden movement startled her, and her head jolted up from the pillow, her face wet with her tears. He obviously said nothing to her, but it seemed as though his presence was enough, because without him even needing to say anything she jumped up and wrapped her arms around him, letting her face rest against the cool metal on his chest, and he responded by putting his own hand on her back and pulling her in a little closer.

 _“I miss him so much,”_ she’d whispered, a whine present in her voice. _“I wish he was here, I just miss him so much…”_

And that was the last time she ever mentioned it. After she’d cried all the tears she had for that night, she thanked him for being there, went back to sleep, and never said another word. It was time for her to heal properly, he thought, and the idea of a memorial service for everyone to be able to honor him sounded like a good way to do it.

“Absolutely,” Gordon responded. “I think that would be really good for Alyx.”

Isaac gave him an earnest smile. “We couldn’t agree more.”

“Alyx and I do not have the best relationship, and that’s apparent,” Judith chimed in, “but I know her well, and I know that there’s no way she’s grieved properly over Eli.”

Gordon nodded and added, “I think you’re right, Dr. Mossman.”

“Oh, please, Gordon, we’ve known each other long enough for you to call me Judith.” Her smile was warm and almost motherly, though her eyes still showed that same sadness they usually did.

“Alright, Judith,” he conceded, smiling back.

“It’s very good to hear you talking again, Gordon,” interjected Dr. Kleiner. “We’ll be able to get you back on our science team very soon.”

“That’s actually exactly what I came to discuss with you.”

“Ah, fantastic! Yes, I’ll have to speak with Dr. Magnusson,” a very annoyed emphasis hitting that name, “ about where you’ll belong, but I doubt he’ll have any protests worth considering.”

 _They don’t just think I’m for heavy-lifting,_ was all Gordon could think in the moment. _He still values me as a scientist and not a sharp-shooter._ The relief that swept through his body was insurmountable; he’d actually be able to continue research instead of being sent out and expected to kill monsters. He wasn’t a killing machine, he was just a physicist. He could’ve hugged Isaac.

But there was a more important matter weighing down the conversation. “Who’s going to tell Alyx about the memorial?”

\---

_You’ve procrastinated enough. You have to go do it._

As soon as Gordon thought his days of being sent out into war were over, Kleiner had given him the task of telling Alyx that all of her balled-up grief was about to be unraveled. He had no idea what that was going to look like. No matter what, it was going to be ugly. It was late afternoon now; the sun was nowhere near setting, but it was low enough in the sky to cast long shadows across the valley in which the White Forest base sat. As he stepped into the outdoors a sharp breeze hit his bare arms, sending him recoiling slightly; he had been completely unaware of the cold while he was cozied up in his suit. Now he understood why everyone here wore jackets.

He found Alyx exactly where he expected to find her, lying on the grass where they’d been early that morning watching the sunrise. Down the hill a few feet from where she sat was a trash bin full of broken glass, presumably from the old beer bottles. On one side of her lay the Gravity Gun, and on her other side, Dog, who seemed very pleased to have his own downtime. Alyx’s head turned to face the noise of Gordon’s footsteps as he walked up, and she quickly sat upright when she realized it was him. “Hey, Gordon!”

“Having fun out here?” he asked, heading up the hill.

“Yeah, just enjoying the weather now. Watch out for glass.”

He gave her an affirming nod as he slowed down a bit on his ascent to where she was, trying to be mindful of any brown shards that may have been left over. He made it up safely, though, and took a seat next to her.

“What have you been up to today?” she inquired as she readjusted the headband keeping her hair out of her face. She looked so cute, he thought. And so happy. The drop in his stomach came back for a visit, but he knew it was coming back for other reasons.

“Oh, not a lot. I talked to Kleiner, he’s putting me back on the research team.”

“Really?!” Alyx gasped. “That’s great! That’s what you wanted, right?”

He smiled somberly, resting his arms on his knees. “Yeah, it is. As long as Magnusson agrees.”

“Magnusson’s an ass, but he’s not an idiot. I bet by the end of the week you’re gonna be back working with Kleiner.”

“I really hope so.”

She grinned at him for a moment before deciding to lie back down in the grass, arms resting behind her head. “I don’t remember the last time I just sat outside like this. I was probably a kid.”

“I don’t either, honestly,” agreed Gordon as he decided to do the same. The clouds were so delicate and wispy. Stratus? No, wait, those were cirrus. “It was most likely back in Boston. God, New Mexico’s weather was just… oppressively hot.”

“That much I do remember.”

There was a lull in conversation for a few long moments. “What was Boston like?” Alyx finally asked.

He laughed. “Cold. Ridiculously cold. Just feet upon feet of snow all winter. But the spring was always great. All of the flowers would bloom, and it’d be just warm enough for you to leave your coat at home and just go walking.”

“That sounds nice.”

“It was. Although I can’t say I went outside much at all during grad school, except maybe to buy groceries.” Alyx laughed at that, and the lurch reminded Gordon what he came out here for.

Another pause, as he tried to figure out what he was going to say. Was there even a way to make it sound better, to make things easier for her? Eli had already been buried. They’d done it the night after he passed, but Alyx was barely there when they did. Physically, she was, but he could tell that her mind, and possibly even her soul, were elsewhere. She didn’t even want to sleep after the burial, she just wanted to board the helicopter to meet Mossman. There was nothing about that night that even resembled closure for anyone. And now she’d gone two more months without any kind of closure, and the wounds had to be healing wrong. They were going to have to reopen them. How gently could he possibly do it?

“What’s wrong?”

Alyx had looked over at him while he was lost in thought. His face must’ve conveyed more worry than he’d wanted, because she was reflecting that expression right back to him. It was time to ‘fess up.

“Alyx,” he began. He decided it would be best to deliver the news sitting up rather than lying down, and she immediately followed. “Isaac and Judith want to have a memorial service for your dad.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I changed all the mentions of Antarctica to the Arctic because I realized that 1) Getting from Europe to Antarctica in a helicopter is the most unrealistic thing I've ever heard of in my life, and 2) Marc Laidlaw probably changed the Arctic to Antarctica as another gag in Epistle 3. P.S., I hate Epistle 3. Can you tell?
> 
> Also, this is probably my favorite chapter I've written so far. I had to step away from it for a few days and do some idle brainstorming before I could get it perfect, and I'm so happy with it. It's exactly 2 in the morning right now as I publish it so do bear with me if it makes absolutely no sense. I just really wanted to get it up before bed.

The day Alyx’s father died was easily the worst day of her entire life.

The hazy vignette that the Advisor cast on her vision sent her head reeling, desperately trying to grasp onto consciousness and awareness, begging her body to reach out and save him. She was pinned to the wall, entirely helpless, forced to watch as the Combine creature slid its tongue through the back of her father’s neck, severing his spinal cord, and all she could manage to do was scream. Dog was just a few seconds too late. He tackled the Advisor and saved her and Gordon from its grasp, sending them falling back down to the ground, but she wished he hadn’t. Her dad was gone. He was gone. She fell over his body, pulling him into her chest, pleading with him to return to her, not to leave her, but he was already dead. There was no hoping or begging or praying that could bring him back. Her dad was gone.

The burial was nice. He would’ve liked it, she thought. It was only her, Gordon, Barney, and Isaac, absolutely his closest friends through everything. They buried his body under a great big fir tree at the base of one of the many small cliffs around the base, and Isaac read a passage out of Eli’s Bible. She couldn’t recall a single word he’d said that evening, though. The entire night felt like a nightmare that she couldn’t seem to wake herself from; hazy, distant, muffled, but much too vivid for her liking. It was everything she could possibly do to stay in that spot under the tree long enough for the short service to end, and the second it did she tore off for the warehouse in which the helicopter still sat, waiting for them before her world crumbled around her.

She was the one who had to tell Judith. She had to tell probably the second most important person in her father’s life that he was gone, had been ripped away from them while she was off trying to do her job. Mossman didn’t get to watch him be buried; the last time she’d seen him had been in the Citadel. Alyx had to watch this woman grieve the way she had first grieved and allow her to dredge up all of this anger and desperate sadness she had been trying so hard to push down. Every day they spent in the Arctic made it fractionally easier to cope, as with every day came more and more distractions. She thought that that meant healing. She thought it meant she was moving on. She was nowhere near done grieving, but she thought she was okay. And now they wanted to bring everything back to the surface to let it rot a little more.

“Why?” she finally responded to Gordon’s announcement. “What good is that going to do?”

“Well, they-”

“We already buried him,” she snapped. “We already had a service. He’s been dead for _two months_ , why should we just bring all of this up again?!”

“They thought it would be good for you.”

“ _Good_ for me?! How is making me relive all of that _good_ for me?!”

Gordon reached out to touch her. “ _Alyx-_ ”

“No!” She ripped her arm away from him and scrambled up to her feet, causing Dog to whir in alarm. “If Judith hasn’t dealt with all her shit, then that’s her problem. Don’t try to make this about me. We’re _not_ having another service.”

Gordon was probably pulling himself up from the grass now, but Alyx was already facing away from him, bounding down the hill to escape. Escape this conversation, escape the locking and tightening in her throat, the burning that began to seep into the corners of her eyes. She could hear Dog’s machinery squeaking as he followed her, but that was about the only thing around her that was loud enough to surpass her breathing, the blood flowing through her head, and her mind racing. She could barely even hear Gordon yelling after her. She didn’t care.

She had no idea where she was running; probably to one of the old outposts that had been destroyed before the rocket launch. Where exactly her legs took her as her vision grew bleary was hardly her concern as long as they took her somewhere far and they took her there fast. Eventually she came to the debris of the old sawmill, falling to her knees and feeling the splintering of the wood as it pricked at her hands. Her tears were dropping steadily now. Broken heaves escaped her mouth and shook her entire body, only a heap of flesh and clothing over the shambled building. The whirring of Dog’s joints was nowhere to be heard anymore, he must’ve stopped behind her at some point. It was just her here, completely alone. Suitable.

The wood beneath her was beginning to gain dark specks from the tears rolling down off her face. She hadn’t cried like this in so long. Now the levy had burst and she was left entirely helpless, like a spectator watching herself sob and shake and sputter out incomprehensible words. Mucus began to run down from her noise, oh god, she felt disgusting. Her entire face and most of her neck was drenched in salt water, soaking the neck of her sweater and making it heavy and uncomfortably moist against her skin. The outside of her body, trembling and overflowing, now reflected the very back of her mind and all the thoughts and feelings she had been pushing back and back and back, further and further, convincing herself that she was healing when the only thing she had been doing this entire time was forcing her grief into a denser ball that was always bound to collapse in on itself and cause a supernova. This was the supernova, this was the explosion, the re-airing of all of her moments of sadness she’d refused to deal with. It was like every single memory she’d ever made with her father was competing with one another to see who could be the fastest to get to the front of her brain, to replay in the most devastating slideshow anyone had ever seen. Farther into a ball her body collapsed onto the rubble as the weight of her mind seemed to physically push her downward. She was the strong one. She was the brave one, the one her father always knew would spring back after every loss. She was resilient, made of steel. Now she was just melting. She was crumbling under the weight of everything.

The sobs eventually gave way to quicker, shallower breaths as she knelt there covered in flecks of wood and dirt. A pounding that was much worse than it even was this morning filled her head from the pressure of her crying, feeling as though someone had split her head open with an axe—however, even with the roaring pain in her skull, a wave of clarity began to wash over her. Maybe it was lightheadedness from the current speed of her breaths, but she didn’t feel quite as heavy as before, weighed down. Two months’ worth of pressure was just released all at once. Catharsis definitely wasn’t the word to describe the experience, but maybe despite her thinking it was a step backward, it was in fact a step forward. Either way, she felt pathetic. She was crying in a literal heap of rubble, wood, and sheets of metal, alone out in the woods. That was the definition of pathetic.

“ _There_ she is! Alyx!”

Gordon. He’d come running after her. As if she wasn’t pitiful enough covered in wood shavings and her own tears, now she needed someone to come get her and fix her. She couldn’t bear to look at him as he came jogging up to the pile she had stooped upon, using a hand to cover her eyes and hide her shame. “I’m fine, Gordon,” came out of her mouth with the embarrassing filter of congestion. “You didn’t have to come rescue me or something.”

Even though she couldn’t see his face, she could feel the energy of his slight offense radiating from him. She heard the dirt below his feet crunch as he moved from a standing position down to a squat. “You’re not fine.”

Alyx sniffled and uncovered an eye to glare at him. “Okay, no shit.”

“That’s okay. For you to not be fine.” She lowered the hand from her face and diverted her gaze to something else, which signaled him to continue. Damn him and his voice of reason. “Alyx, you’re the strongest person I’ve ever met, but that doesn’t mean you have to bottle everything up all the time.”

“…You’re one to talk, Freeman,” she retorted with the faintest outline of a grin, to which he responded with a dry laugh.

“Yeah, I know.”

Gordon hovered in silence for a few seconds; he seemed like he was testing the waters and trying to find out what she would do next. When she did nothing, he leaned his arm back behind him and sat down. It was probably her turn to speak again.

Alyx shook her head. “My dad would be so upset if he could see me right now. All this… stuff I’ve been holding onto. He’d be disappointed in me.”

“Not _in_ you,” Gordon corrected softly, “ _for_ you.”

“Yeah.” A long sigh released from deep in her chest. “He’s the one person who would know what to do right now. But if he was here, I wouldn’t feel like this.”

“Funny how that works, isn’t it.”

“I don’t think funny is the word.”

“…No, you’re right, it’s not.”

Another uncomfortable blanket of silence fell over them as they sat together in the dirt. Alyx tried her best to wipe her face of all the moisture left from her meltdown, though she still felt sticky remnants of the tears on her cheeks. She didn’t know what else to say, nor did she know if there was anything left worth saying regardless of whether or not she felt like saying it.

Gordon’s quiet voice popped the bubble. “My brother died when I was in high school. Timothy. It took me… years to recover from it.”

“I’m so sorry,” Alyx whispered in shock. “I had no idea you had a brother.”

“I have a sister, too, Emily. Well…” a look just shy of horror suddenly cast a shadow on his face. “God knows what happened to her after the Resonance Cascade.”

God, she couldn’t believe she was hearing this, and she couldn’t believe she hadn’t even _thought_ of the possibility of him having a family. Of course he did. Everyone had a family before this happened.

“Well, anyway, my point was, I understand. I really do. It is… the hardest thing in the world.” A grim smile crept across his face as if he was trying as hard as he could to bring the conversation anywhere besides where it was. “I’d fight more aliens than there are in the universe if it meant I could see him again. Just for a minute.”

“I know the feeling,” she breathed. 

He looked at her again with those young green eyes, now glazed over with mourning. “It’s okay if you don’t want to do the memorial. You’re the only one who knows what’s best for you.”

“Did Timothy’s funeral help you?”

“It… it did, yeah. Being able to say goodbye was… good.”

Her head fell to face the dirt again. Everything in her before was screaming, pulling alarms and sending out alerts to run away from anything and everything that could possibly remind her of the feeling of holding her father’s dead body in her arms. The pain was unbearable, unfathomably excruciating to have weighing on her shoulders in every waking moment and most unconscious ones, too. There were days she felt like she couldn’t breathe, because if her lungs expanded a little bit too much the pressure on her chest might cause them to collapse in on themselves and never be able to take in another gulp of air again. She carried all of this all the time. Maybe, just maybe, if she leaned into it instead of trying to push it away, it would unload itself.

“Okay then.” She nodded, first unsurely, but then her pace picked up and she lifted her eyes to his. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

He smiled gently and returned her nod before picking himself up off of the ground, next extending his hand to help her up. She took it in her own and allowed him to pull her up, and silently, neither of them dared be the first to let go as they drifted back to the base.

\---

The evening passed and the sun completed its usual stroll through the sky to bring the sleepy countryside back to morning again. It took no time at all for all hands to be back on deck, planning the memorial that would take place that night. Nearly every single person at the White Forest base came together that day to help out, whether with a special skill or simply with support for those close to Eli. Dozens of rebels volunteered to sing Amazing Grace, a former pastor offered his experience in funeral proceedings—everyone who had ever been vaguely touched by the leadership of Eli Vance was more than eager to show their appreciation. Even Magnusson offered anything he could give ( _”I’m not a monster, Kleiner.”_ ). The only person who Gordon hadn’t seen around on the busy, melancholy morning was Eli’s daughter, practically the guest of honor. He understood. Going to a service was one thing, being around in the hours before, the air heavy with anticipation, was another. If she needed to be alone, that was okay.

He was able to find a presentable button-up shirt, made of dark blue flannel, probably as close to black as he would be able to get. That and the pair of jeans that Barney had given him were the nicest clothes he had worn since his days at Black Mesa—he was thankful he didn’t have to wear a tie with it all. It was nowhere near church-appropriate attire, but it was going to have to do. He had a feeling no one would be paying too much attention to who was and wasn’t following the dress code that hadn’t necessarily been enforced in the first place.

The door to Alyx’s room, slightly ajar, creaked open from the weight of his hand. She stood in the dim light of the lamp wrapping the wound on her arm with the bandage she always wore. Her hair was shiny and curly on the edges, a sign she’d just taken a shower. The same, aging black sweater from yesterday hung over her frame along with the jeans that seemed to never leave her legs. Her usual headband did not hold the hair back from her face today; instead it sat on the nightstand, forgotten. Her damp locks clung to her temples as she turned to face him in the doorway.

“You ready?”

She finished tucking the bandage’s edge into itself to secure it around her arm. “That’s a loaded question.”

“I know," he replied gravely.

Chairs, benches, and whatever other seating that was available was lined up neatly in the hangar where Eli had died. Why they decided to hold it there escaped Gordon, though he could only assume that it was for the space since the place was bursting with attendees. He could already see the pain on her face as he gently ushered her into the room. Whoever it was who had been responsible for cleaning the ground after the tragedy had clearly done their best, though a faint pink outline was still present on the concrete where his body had fallen.

The front row was reserved for them. Isaac stood up from his folding chair with vigor to greet the girl who had called him Uncle Kleiner for most of her life. The old man rested his hands on her arms, her latching her hands to the underside of his forearms, and they both gave each other a delicate squeeze as they shared such an intense feeling without even having to say a word. There weren’t any available to either of them.

“Thank you for this,” Judith murmured to Alyx when it was her turn to greet her. She whispered her own bittersweet gratitude in return before taking her seat on the end of the aisle. Quiet chatter floated through the hangar as people slowly made their way through the rows of chairs to settle in for the service to honor their late leader. The noise fell down to an echo when the small choir circled around the small podium from which the pastor would later read.

_Amazing grace,_  
_How sweet the sound_  
_That saved a wretch like me,_  
_I once was lost,_  
_But now, I’m found,_  
_Was blind, but now I see._

“Greetings, my dear friends.” Reverend Jacobs was not quite an old man, but his time in the Resistance had not been kind to his body. His skin carried the weight of a man twice his age. This, however, did not stop him from stepping up to the makeshift altar to honor such an important figure. Behind him sat the beloved picture of Eli, Azian, and Alyx, the one thing he had been able to rescue from Black Mesa besides his daughter. Gordon had never been to a funeral like this before. It hadn’t dawned on him until now that they wouldn’t possibly have a recent photo of him.

“We are gathered in this place tonight to remember and honor Dr. Eli Vance, one of the most remarkable men in our history. Many of us remember him as a fearless leader, the man who kept so many of us safe from Combine terror. However, many of us also remember him as a caring figure. A father, a lover, or a close friend.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Gordon saw Alyx reach over and take Isaac’s hand in her own, squeezing it tightly. He gazed over at her and the indescribable sorrow that filled her eyes caused him to feel like someone had just crashed their entire bodyweight directly into his stomach. She didn’t shed a single tear the entire night. The ceremony went on, first with the short speech from the Reverend, followed by a candle lighting and an excerpt from the Bible, and the sun slowly descended below the hangar’s windows until the only thing illuminating the service was the candles and the dim overhead light that hung over them. 

It was beautiful. It was perfectly fitting to Eli. A night dedicated to family, friends, and the countless lives that had been saved under his command, all coming together in one place to broadcast their final messages of appreciation and love. Dr. Mossman was so strong when it came her turn to deliver her perspective. He couldn’t help but feel so horrible for her—she clearly had loved him with everything she had, and the image of her face the moment she heard the news that he had died wasn’t something that was going to fade from his memory for a long time to come. Isaac’s tribute to his companion of so many years was nothing short of touching. It took an astonishing amount of effort for Gordon to hold back the tears that wanted to creep out as he watched Kleiner choke back his own. Alyx didn’t speak. They all thought it best for her not to, and she agreed with that sentiment. She owed nothing to the crowd of people who had come here to pay respects to her father—this was more for her than for anyone else, after all. 

One last reading from the book of Psalms to close out the evening, and then the memorial ended. Shuffling feet and soft murmurs coupled with the sound of the makeshift choir’s hums. People began to rise from their seats to return back to their normal lives. The air was heavy with sorrow but also contained a spark of renewal, as if now, finally, the Resistance knew how to continue.

Eli’s daughter did not move from her seat until there were only two people left in the hangar.

“Would you like to go?” Gordon whispered tenderly, reaching an arm over her shoulders.

“I don’t know,” she replied, almost inaudible. “In a minute, maybe.”

“Okay. That’s okay.”

A long lapse sat over the two of them as she slowly gathered the energy to stand. With her he immediately followed to carefully lead her wherever she decided to go. He knew what it was like to be alone. Agonizingly and terrifyingly alone. There was no way he was going to let her go through this without someone next to her, no matter if her usual stubborn nature got in the way. She’d already done enough of it by herself. Just because she could handle things on her own didn’t mean she had to.

He attentively escorted her through the crowd of rebels that had gathered along the path towards the elevator leading down to the dormitories. The two of them stepped into the lift, and as the doors closed behind them, he saw her shoulders shake before she completely broke down in choking sobs. She leaned her weight against the wall, hunching over and letting her hands completely engulf her face as water cascaded down her arms and left little droplets on the thighs of her jeans. All he could think to do was face her and put a hand on each of her shoulders to remind her that he was there, but the second he touched her she lunged forward to wrap her arms around him. She continued to weep into his shirt the rest of the way down the elevator.

It halted at its destination and the two of them stumbled out of it, his arm draped protectively around her as he guided her to her room down the corridor. He quickly closed the door behind them the moment they reached the room—she leapt for him again and this time he enveloped her in his arms and caressed the back of her head as she continued to sob. It was horrible to see her like this. This just wasn’t Alyx.

“Shhhhh,” he hushed, “it’s okay.”

Convulsing bawls very slowly gave way to softer whimpering; the toll of crying was beginning to get to her and the effects of purging all that emotion were creeping in. He felt it as a calm wave washed over the both of them, though she continued to cling to his shirt like her life depended on it. “You’re okay, Alyx. Everything is alright.”

Steadily, her breathing began to come back to its normal rate. Her hands dropped from his shoulder blades down to his lower back, her grip significantly looser than before. She looked up at him with some bitter cross between an exhausted grimace and a grateful smile. “Thank you, Gordon,” she breathed. He smiled sheepishly and opened his mouth to rebut. “No, really. Thank you. I couldn’t have… This would’ve been even more impossible without you. Thank you.”

He looked down at her with so much empathy. Her amber eyes sparkled in the low light as they always did, only glimmering even more with the wetness of her tears. He put a thumb to her face to wipe away the moist trails that led from her eyes, and she gently wrapped a hand around his wrist. She didn’t break eye contact. Neither did he.

For some reason, his heartbeat got a whole lot faster when she looked at him like that.

An eternity passed, though it was most likely only a few seconds in real time. Time was distorted in this little room where the only light source was the small lamp in the corner, as if the only thing that existed in the entire world was what could be contained in this little box. It might as well have been that way. From his peripheral he watched her breaths get faster again, and then after a shift in expression as if she was giving something some serious thought, she bolted up onto her tip toes, threw her arms up around his neck, and deliberately placed her lips onto his.

It was a slow, sweet, beautiful kiss. She pulled away just barely to catch a glimpse of his face again, but if she was about to say something she was immediately interrupted by another kiss. The second turned into a third, a fifth, a tenth, and then the lines between each became too blurred for anyone to possibly keep count—all of a sudden he felt his hands drifting from her waist up under her sweater to glide up her warm, bare back, and then her hands traveled to his collarbone, then down his sternum, undoing the buttons of his shirt as they went.

Out in the hallway, the click of a lock could be heard.


	7. Chapter 7

A sheet of quiet hovered over the room, not yet awake for the day. The faintest clamoring could be picked up from out in the hallway as rebels made their usual trips to the kitchen to make breakfast, but inside the little concrete room, there was nothing but the nearly imperceptible sound of two bodies breathing. The bed was most definitely too small to hold two people, so Gordon had been pushed up against the wall at some point in the night—probably not the most comfortable position to be in, Alyx realized.

Even without light in the room she could tell he was still asleep by how slowly he was breathing. She felt his chest rising and falling against her back as the two of them filled all the available space in the tiny bed. She wanted to let him sleep, but she couldn’t stand to just lay there either, so she opted to lean over and turn on her lamp. His hand idly slid off of her hip where it had previously been rested, and then as she rolled over to face him she saw him raise the hand up to squeeze his eyes which he had squinted open. “Morning.”

“Mmm, morning,” he mumbled back, his voice deeper and raspier in the early morning. She loved it.

Both of them took refuge under the sheets and tattered quilt, neither of the two had yet reclaimed their clothes from the places they’d been dropped around the bed the night before. That night, for a little while, no matter how fleeting it would eventually be, it felt like everything had fallen into place. She knew at some point they were going to have to face the sunlight and the people and all of their problems that had only been cast away temporarily. But god, the feeling of being so close to him, to seeing him and feeling the sensation of his bare skin against hers, no hard metal between them, no danger, nothing keeping them apart, that was beyond description. It was euphoric. It was like she had been waiting her entire life to feel like that.

He had spoken so honestly afterwards. His head rested against his side of the pillow, he’d truly spilled his heart to her, and she had, too. Everything, how he felt about her, how long it’d taken for him to realize it—the words just came out of both of their mouths with nothing to stop them, and they’d laughed and kissed and just taken each other in. His soft eyes without the barrier of thick glasses; they looked so much bigger without the lenses distorting them. The smiles that were just for her and no one else.

“How’d you sleep?” she whispered, accompanying her question with a gentle stroke of his hair.

“Uh, honestly? Not the best,” he chuckled. “The bed was… a _little_ small.”

She laughed back. “Yeah, sorry.”

“It’s okay. I’m glad to be awake.”

One of those soft just-for-her smiles grew onto his face as he brushed her thick black hair off of her forehead and planted a small kiss where it had been. “What about you, did you sleep okay?”

“I’ve had better nights,” she replied honestly, still playing with his hair. “But I wouldn’t change anything.”

They lied there and continued to stare at each other for a few moments. Once again, it felt like time had no meaning inside their room. She watched his eyes travel all over her face, like he was trying to take her all in… and then his smile faded into a look that she could only describe as dawning horror.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Oh, god. Oh, Alyx.” His brow furrowed and his eyes shut hard. “I should go.”

“…What? Why?”

Gordon began to scramble over her to get out of the bed, cursing himself under his breath. “Stupid, why am I such an idiot?”

“Gordon, you’re freaking me out.”

All of the magic and softness that had once filled the room was draining out of it like something out of a horror movie. What just happened? Not even a minute ago he was beaming at her, laying with her like it was the only thing he wanted to do—now he was just going to leave? He swiped his glasses from the bedside table and secured them on his face so that he could find his clothes on the floor. “I am so sorry, I can’t believe I was so stupid.”

“Gordon!”

He stopped moving for a second to look at her. “Alyx. I slept with you twenty minutes after your dad’s _memorial service._ ”

“I…” She was speechless. Wrapping the quilt around her, she rose from the bed to try to calm him down as he rushed for his clothes. “That doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it matters! God, I took advantage of you!”

She stood there, draped in the covers, absolutely no idea what to say. Everything was fine a minute ago. Not just fine, _amazing_ , and then he went and ruined it. What could this possibly mean moving forward? It wasn’t like they were going to be able to undo what had just happened. They couldn’t unsay the things they’d confessed to each other. The damage was done, no takebacks.

“Did you mean what you said last night?” Her voice was surprisingly angry, she didn’t expect her words to sound so sharp.

He stopped in his tracks halfway into frantically buttoning his shirt. “Yes. Yes, I did, I meant all of it.”

“So, you apparently _’took advantage’_ of me, but then you sat there and gushed at me for an hour about how much you cared about me? That doesn’t add up.”

“Alyx.” He looked so devastated. “I’m so sorry. It was such bad timing. Look,” he sighed, reaching out to touch her shoulder, which she moved away before he could. “You’re not ready for this. I don’t know why I thought you would be. I don’t think I’m ready either.”

“And now you’re just going to leave.”

“I have to.”

“No one’s making you!”

The sadness and guilt on his face flared up into anger to match her own. “ _I_ am making myself leave. I cannot sit here and be another problem in your life right now. You’re dealing with too much.”

“I think I can decide what’s too much. I’m not some baby who needs coddling!”

“Please don’t. _Please_ don’t.” He finished getting dressed, grabbed his boots, and muttered a last apology to her before opening the door to leave. Alyx saw him freeze to a halt in the doorway, and her eyes widened when she caught a glimpse of Barney passing down the hall.

“Whoa. _Wait a second-!_ ”

That was all she heard before Gordon slammed the door behind him.

\--- 

“Don’t even _think_ about it.”

Barney threw his hands up defensively. “I’m not gonna say anything.”

This was all wrong. What had started as such a wonderful morning had so quickly descended into a complete nightmare, and it was all Gordon’s fault. She kissed him. She kissed him and he let her when he should’ve pulled away, said it was a bad time, he didn’t feel right about it. But instead he decided to kiss her back, and the rest was history. It hurt so much that he couldn’t take it all back. He cared about her so much; he would rather hack his own arm off with a rusty pocket knife than ever come close to hurting her. And now, here they were. She was more than willing, both of them had enjoyed themselves more than he could even put into words, but he could not shake the feeling that he had taken advantage of her. She was at her absolute weakest last night. He should’ve pulled away. He should’ve left.

He had destroyed everything.

“Listen, I dunno what the hell all that’s about, and I’m not gonna bother asking questions,” Barney explained as he hesitantly followed Gordon down the hall, “but if I were you, I’d change clothes soon, ‘cause the Geek Squad’s lookin’ for ya.”

Gordon sighed. He knew him well enough to assume that he was talking about the science team. “What do they want?”

“Dunno. Didn’t say.”

“Fine, I’ll be up there in a minute.” Before the old security guard could get another word out, he quickly opened the door to his room and shut it right behind him. Making small talk with the guy who just caught him on his walk of shame (aptly named in this circumstance) out of Alyx’s room was not exactly what he wanted for his morning. He just wanted to be alone, to catch his breath, figure out what came next. What did come next?

Gordon was not the type of person to have a one-night stand. He couldn’t wrap his head around the fact that there were people so good at compartmentalizing their emotions that they could just go out and find someone to spend a night with without any strings attached. The few flings he’d entertained in his college years left him chasing down paths that only left to heartache, and he decided that was a feat he was simply not capable of achieving. This felt a thousand times worse. A perfect stranger at a bar, that was one thing. Alyx wasn’t a stranger. She was agonizingly familiar, someone whose presence he had grown to love so much, like something he couldn’t handle living without. How he was going to go back to normal after such a big mistake—though it hurt him so much to call their night together a mistake, it was beautiful and powerful and everything he could’ve possibly wanted—did he even remember what normal was like? Would he even be able to attempt to be cordial, to go back to being _just friends?_ Of course he wouldn’t. That was his nature.

That killed him more than anything. Not only had he created something he couldn’t possibly reverse, the only way he could think to make it better would be to abandon his best friend.

He could not talk to her. He could not look at her. He couldn’t even feel her breathing the same air as he did. It would be too much, because if he caught a glimpse of her or a light breeze as she walked by him, it would be over; there was no way he’d be able to see her without just wanting to take her into his arms again and kiss her, because that was the only thing that he could think about when he pictured her face.

He was completely, utterly, totally devastated.

The guilty expression he had worn out of Alyx’s room was still there as he exited his own in a fresh change of clothes. Exhausted in every possible way, he pushed himself towards the lift and rode it in silence to the level where he knew he would meet Dr. Kleiner. He felt like a ghost walking through the doors to get to the silo, as if no one and everyone was watching him glide lifelessly down each corridor. He hoped no one noticed.

_I can’t go in there looking like this._ He forced his posture to normalize, blinking away the look of shame and sadness, shaking his arms to try and jolt himself back to his usual self. It hardly worked, but he figured it was as good as it was going to get. He punched in the code for the door and opened it.

“Ah, Gordon!” Isaac trod over to stand in front of the entrance. “It’s fantastic to see you. I appreciate you making good time.”

He nodded in reply. “What did you need?”

“Well! After the service last night, Dr. Mossman, Dr. Magnusson, and I came together to discuss you joining us in our future research. I think you’ll find our work on teleportation extremely fascinating.”

“As long as you don’t go near any microwaves,” a familiarly grumpy voice griped from a standing desk where sat a large computer. Kleiner shook his head.

“What do you say, Gordon? I’m sure you’re eager to get into a white coat once again now that your vigilante work is finished.”

The moment for which he had been hoping for months had arrived. Pride swelled in his chest as he imagined the feeling of being inside a lab coat instead of the HEV suit—a modest, boringly-colored button-up shirt, a pair of the worst khaki slacks anyone had ever seen, and perhaps even one of those _ridiculous ties._ He could hardly believe that that was his dream after so long of resenting the dress code thrust upon him and all of his poor old coworkers, but it was almost funny to him the things he missed about life before the Cascade. He never thought he’d miss soup in a cup or annoying television advertisements, the agonizingly slow tram that took him from his apartment to Sector C and back again, or even Dr. Birdwell, the scientist who whistled obnoxiously everywhere he went in the facility, almost unavoidable. He missed a lot of benign things, and that white coat was at the top of the list.

He could barely contain his excitement thinking about what it would be like to be back, how he’d be able to return to sitting down and reading—god, he probably had months of reading to do to catch up on all the advances made during his stasis—and could spend an entire day just writing himself in circles on a chalkboard as he tried to figure out the equations he was missing. He could work alongside Dr. Kleiner once again, now twenty years older and certainly more eccentric, but nevertheless even more brilliant than he was when Gordon was his pupil. This was amazing. This was the most incredible opportunity he’d gotten since simply the ability to survive all this time. And how excited Alyx was going to be when—!

_Oh._

_Right._

“Absolutely.” The excitement had faded substantially, but he wasn’t about to say no. Work was exactly what he needed right now. “I’m honored.”

“We’re the ones who should be honored, Dr. Freeman,” said Judith, walking up to the two, a large notebook in hand. “I’ve been trying to compile our research—well, mostly Eli’s—the best I could to make it easier to understand. Trust me, if I hadn’t you’d probably be spending your first few weeks just sifting through loose-leaf notes. I think we can all agree your time is much too valuable for that.”

“Thank you, that’s really nice of you,” Gordon responded as he took the journal from her hands. Flipping through, he was startled to see that _this_ was the organized and abridged version. They wouldn’t be Black Mesa’s finest if they didn’t use the most unmethodical approach humanly possible. “This is… going to take a while.”

Judith laughed softly. “And that’s completely fine. It’s a lot, and that’s not even all of it yet.”

“We will be happy to catch you up no matter how long it may take. You’ve missed quite a few years of progress.”

He nodded again, this time more absent, still skimming the truckloads of information that lay in front of him in this notebook he’d been handed. “Thank you again.”

“No need for so much gratitude, we’re all overjoyed to have you here. Isn’t that right, Arne?”

“Yes, yes, he’s a _genius_ scientist who we all love so very much,” Magnusson spat with overexaggerated hand gestures, though he didn’t look away from his work. Judith rolled her eyes and gave Gordon a look that reminded him much too much of Alyx and her own _“Classic Magnusson”_ smirk. “Are you going to throw a homecoming parade for him or are you going to put him to work?”

“Have you eaten yet this morning?” Isaac asked.

“No. I’m not exactly hungry, though.”

“Alright then, whenever you feel ready, we can begin clueing you in on our projects. The quicker we can get you caught up to speed, the quicker we can put your prodigious mind to use.”

He felt a semblance of a smile upturn the corners of his mouth and forced it to come forth as he looked at his dear old professor and overseer. “I’m ready.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EMETOPHOBIA WARNING FOR THIS CHAPTER! It's only one paragraph, easily skipped. Just wanted to let you know! Also, thanks for bearing with me lately, I've really wanted to update this fic but I've had rehearsals for a play and I have had NO free time nor energy to write. I actually wrote most of this chapter on my phone while sitting in the green room before rehearsal.
> 
> I thought I was going to write 10 chapters... it looks like it'll be a few more than that. I have some things planned. Muahahaha, heeheehoo, etc.

Alyx was staring into a bowl of oatmeal, but she couldn’t seem to bring the spoon to her mouth. It was apparent that a few eyes seemed planted on her, but her head was too full to make room for caring. His words bounced around in the inside of her skull. _You’re not ready for this. I don’t know why I thought you would be._

With all the things they said, with all the words they exchanged, those were the ones that stabbed her the most. She didn’t need someone to take care of her. She didn’t need him to look at her and see someone he needed to protect; she was handling that on her own just fine. The courage and right opportunity to finally lean into her feelings for him—the desire that had been eating away at her for so long and she’d been so terrified to entertain—was there. He was so close to her. The room was dimly lit. The air was _so_ heavy and there was almost a gravitational pull between them. He was a black hole and she was helpless to escape. It was so, so right, and perfect, and a thousand different words she could possibly think of to describe something so astronomically wonderful. She took that risk and she could barely help herself, and _he echoed it._ He wanted it, too. There was absolutely no hesitation, or, if there was, it was so quickly extinguished it want even something to be considered. There wasn’t a shadow of a doubt that he wanted her just as much as she wanted him. 

She was ready. Screw him, she was ready, he didn’t get to decide her emotional stability, _he_ didn’t get to tell her that he took advantage of her when that was clearly not the case. If there was anyone who took advantage of the other, it would have been Alyx. She knew very well she hadn’t, either. 

Unless she had?

...No.

Was that why he ran out? Was he trying to cover for her, to take the blame and put it on himself? 

Had she hurt him?

The spoon clinked loudly in the ceramic bowl and she looked up as she felt eyes move her way. She had to leave. Immediately. The chair squeaked against the floor with her sudden jerk to stand and she kicked it out of her way and bee-lined for the door, not even glancing to see who was watching her; she could feel their gazes pressing into the back of her head regardless of whether she looked in their direction. Get out. Get out. Go. She had no idea where she was going, but she just needed to be alone. Her room was too dark. It was too familiar. Her sheets still smelled like him, she left the moment he was gone and the thought of going back nauseated her. Outside, that was safe now. Yes. Cold, fresh, clean air, that would fix her. The artificial-smelling, dusty air of the bunker suffocated her as her breaths got faster and shallower and her footsteps got more frantic. She felt for the gun on her belt—the likelihood of zombies anywhere nearby at this time of day was low, but no one could ever be quite sure. At least the leftover Combine soldiers had slowed their scattered approaches, so the probability of a raid on the base was even less so than zombies. 

The elevator could not go fast enough, for Christ’s sake, she had never seen it ascend this excruciatingly slow before. All she could do was pace from corner to corner, waiting for the final click of the doors opening. They parted to the side and she burst out of them, accidentally pushing her way past a rebel, to which she gave a muttered _”sorry.”_ She was running at this point, and it felt like the soles of her worn boots were barely touching the ground as she glided across the concrete, swerving around people going about their jobs in the bunker, barely stopping to allow electronic doors hiss open.

A door opened, she saw someone in a lab coat, and her feet froze to the ground. His back was to her, but she knew it was him. 

_Move. Keep moving, Alyx._

He was making conversation with someone as she slowly began to creep by, trying with everything she had to keep her steps light and silent, staying unseen. The white coat suited him so well. Ever since she saw the photo that Dr. Kleiner was so proud of, the picture of the Anomalous Materials team all together, she thought he looked like he belonged in that coat. It certainly fit him much better than the HEV suit ever did. His hands were rested comfortably inside of the pockets like they’d been there this whole time.

Shit, he was blocking her path to the door. There was nothing she could do to avoid him seeing her, unless he decided to be uncharacteristically oblivious to his surroundings. He jumped at every sound behind him. His eyes scanned constantly for any sign of danger. Her sneaking past him without being detected would be even less realistic than seeing a headcrab sprout wings and fly away.

Maybe if she went quickly, didn’t stop to give him _time_ to see her, it would save both of them the turmoil of crossing paths. No obligation for him to interact with her, they could just go about their business without giving each other the time of day. Either way, that was the only idea her brain had the capacity to produce with him standing there, all tall and polished in the white coat and the nice shirt and the loafers and his ever-so-slightly red hair reflecting the fluorescent lights just above his head and—

No, she couldn’t go there. There was no room in this corridor for a black hole. A deep breath made a shaggy entrance into her lungs, and then she burst forward in a forceful speed-walk, flying past him as purposely as she could. If she hadn’t been so inside of her head she could’ve sworn she heard her name behind her, but she wasn’t about to stop and explore it. The door outside opened in front of her and closed just as swiftly, and the ambient sound of the base immediately left, revealing only the chirping of birds. God, finally, some quiet. She could hear herself think. 

Not that she really wanted to entertain any of the thoughts running through her head right now. Too many, far, far too many. The breaths were coming to her easier now that the air was lighter and colder, but the weight had moved from her chest to her brain. He was standing there by the door, holding her, wiping her tears, shushing her and reassuring her that she would be okay. He was there for her. That’s all he came in there for. _She_ kissed him. _She_ unbuttoned his shirt. He agreed, of course, he leaned in, he took her sweater off, he locked the door, he spilled the entire contents of his heart for her to hear and he lied with her in that tiny bed just to be next to her. But would he have done it first? Would he have kissed her first? No. No, he wouldn’t have—obviously he wouldn’t have.

She had hurt him. In her grief, she had picked the absolute worst possible moment to let herself fall for him. No matter how much he wanted her, she had hurt him with her horrible decision. Her fault. Her fault. Her fault.

Last night was supposed to make her feel better. Last night _did_ make her feel better. The miniscule amount of oatmeal she’d managed to eat was begging to come back up now; quite obviously the concept of being “better” had since left entirely. There wasn’t an event that could possibly bring her back down to the level of devastation she felt with every reminder of her father’s death, a feeling incomparable to anything else, however, this did nothing to help that. The fact that her petty boy problems didn’t hurt as much as her grief didn’t mean they weren’t painful at all. It was as if one horrible difficulty in her life had been lifted slightly only to be replaced with something else to carry—she let herself feel a shred of happiness for a few hours and this was her punishment for daring to be vulnerable once in her pathetic life. Gordon had spent the better part of the past few months slowly chipping away at her walls with that crowbar of his, and as soon as they fell she was forced to rebuild them. Being unguarded, allowing herself to let words flow forth without fear of consequence, without… well, without fear at all, felt so amazing! She’d spent her entire life being the strong one, the brave one, daddy’s little fighter, made of stone, cool as a cucumber (what a weird phrase, she couldn’t help but think every time she heard an older rebel use it), a Leader. That stupid scientist with his stupid green eyes and stupid goofy grin had just moseyed right into her life and made a home in her heart without even knowing what he’d done.

He took everything from her. No, no, that wasn’t right, and she knew that. She gave it to him. She gave everything she had to him. And he accepted it just for a minute. But now it was no one’s anymore. It was up in the air. He gave it back, but he couldn’t just give it back, so now her everything didn’t belong to either of them, and it probably never could. Her own grief-stricken lapse in judgment had destroyed the thing that had been keeping her awake at night for weeks, the idea of touching him, telling him how she really felt and how often she’d thought of holding his hand but had shied away at the last moment, the concept of the warmth shared between the two of them as his skin touched hers. She got it, she got that little night and more than any half-awake daydream could’ve conceived, the sweet nothings, the gentle sensation of him next to her, and those eyes looking at her and only her, and then the look of horror replaced the look of affection and the illusion of happiness shattered like an old window. Twelve hours ago her best friend had turned into her lover. Two hours ago her lover became a complete stranger. Alyx would’ve given anything in the world to just turn the clock back twelve and a few minutes.

Her body’s desire to expel her breakfast was becoming louder and louder until she couldn’t suppress it anymore and she finally had to grant its wish. She’d been to hell and back, _as literally as humanly possible,_ and her stomach had somehow decided, no, all those gory battles and near-death experiences weren’t enough to justify vomiting, even when a Hunter had literally daggered a pike through her abdomen—no, no no! Of course it was when she was just having her third emotional breakdown of the week! She let out a guttural groan as she wiped her mouth, the last remnants of oatmeal and bile seeping into the ground. “Ugh. Gross…”

She felt weak now, though not weak enough to keep her from walking far from the mess she’d just made. It wasn’t the type of day to go running to the sawmill and dramatically throwing herself over the rubble; instead, the grass sounded nice. The privilege of sitting outside and not having much to look out for was something she was really grateful for. She leaned back and fell to the ground, sprawling out to look up at the clouds. It was overcast today, probably why it was so chilly, though she hardly minded at this point. The sky was completely engulfed in waves varying in gray values from light to dark, rippling with the wind. A clear blue sky wouldn’t have suited the day, she thought. She couldn’t feel like shit good and proper with the sun smiling down on her like that. It had gone away just for her.

The fact that Alyx would have to go inside eventually, and would most likely have to face   
Gordon when she did, wasn’t lost on her. She despised it, but she knew it was something she couldn’t avoid for long. No matter how much she loved the cold and enjoyed the press of the soft grass on her back, the tips of her fingers were going to grow red in protest and the little bugs inhabiting the ground where she lay would inevitably decide that the back of her neck was their next meal. For the next little while, though, she would just exist there and watch the sheet of clouds above her. As long as she could.

And she figured out that her tolerance for the cold breeze was pretty damn high, probably a side-effect of enduring the subzero temperatures of the Arctic Circle. Her grip on the exact passage of time was loose, but she assumed she had to have been out for at least two hours, possibly more. The only thing that tipped her off that it might be time to go in was her empty stomach’s decision to beg for food just after getting rid of the last bit, something that perplexed and annoyed her. _Human digestive systems are completely useless._

The rising wasn’t easy—her body had grown stiff both from the chill and from her lack of movement—but she managed to stumble back onto her feet and open up into a good stretch. God, she was cold. It was time. With a shuddery movement as she wrapped her arms around each other, she ran back down the hill to the gate that would let her back into the warmth of the stronghold. When she entered, he wasn’t there anymore. Her initial reaction was a silent sigh of relief, but she quickly felt a pang that made her question whether she was actually glad he wasn’t there. Shaking her head as if it would throw the thought out of her mind, she purposefully strode down the hallways to return to her room despite it being the last place she ever wanted to go again in her life. What was she going to do, sleep on the floor somewhere? No, she had to enter that room again. She had to strip the bed of its sheets and air it out to remove every speck of his scent, every piece of evidence that he was ever there. She had to forget. That was the only way this was going to resolve itself.

In her epic march to get back there as quickly as she could muster, it had slipped her mind to look at where she was walking and her shoulder impacted someone else’s. Shocked, she gazed up at the person she’d slammed into, and of _course_ it was Barney. Who else? It wasn’t like there were a hundred other people living in this godforsaken place or anything. His expression was soft though determined. She knew that look.

“No. Don’t. Don’t Uncle Barney me right now,” she snarked, looking back down.

“Alyx.” His voice was just as faint as his eyes would’ve made one expect, a tone typically only reserved for the Vance family. She turned to leave and he lunged for her arm. “Hey. Stop. You’re not going anywhere.”

“You’re not the judge of that.” Alyx jerked her arm away, but didn’t move her feet. 

Barney scanned the small corridor for any eavesdroppers before turning his gaze back to her. His voice got even quieter. “Did you… did you and Gordon—”

“Yes! Yes we did! I don’t understand how that’s your business!”

“For Pete’s sake, I’m just concerned about you. He’s been snappin’ at me every time I’ve so much as coughed.”

She somehow pulled herself inwards, getting smaller than she thought possible. “I can’t do this, Barney. I don’t want to have this conversation.”

“I’m not asking you to say anything. But I’m asking you to listen.” Her eyes lifted to look up at his hazel ones and she felt like a child. He was absolutely putting his uncle face on right now. She hadn’t seen that since she was a teenager and she thought those days were far, far behind her. “I dunno what happened. Gordon’s not about to divulge anything, and at this point I’ve stopped tryin’ to understand it. I just want to tell you, I’m here. I’m not a _total_ jackass.”

That last sentence forced a small, smileless laugh out of her. “Thanks.”

“’Course. I’d do anything for my favorite niece.”

“Oh, please, don’t do this,” she scoffed humorously, shaking her head and turning to leave again.

“Hey, hey, wait! One more thing.”

She rotated once more to face him, skeptical.

“Look, I knew Freeman for a good while back at Black Mesa. But I’ve known you longer, so you kinda have seniority. Just say the word and I’ll kick his ass for ya, no questions asked.”

Okay, this time she couldn’t stop a slight grin from emerging. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Seeya ‘round, Vance. Take care of yourself.”

One more kind smile was sent her way before Barney resumed his walk in the opposite direction she’d been headed moments before. She looked gratefully in his direction as she watched him disappear around a corner, but it didn’t take but a second for the relatively good feeling to go away, leaving her just as empty as before. Dammit, he’d tried his best, but even old Uncle Barney couldn’t make her feel any better. She really, really hoped he wasn’t actually planning to kick Gordon’s ass, literally or metaphorically.

Before she knew it, her feet had taken her back to her room. If she hadn’t known better, she would’ve sworn that the door between her and the inside was taunting her, egging her on to go ahead and open it, to relive the morning in painstaking detail. It swung open upon the turning of the knob and the jerk of her arm. Light from the hall burst into the room behind her silhouette and she closed her eyes. The quilt she had wrapped herself in as they’d argued was still on the floor, as were her old clothes. For the first time in a long while, she flicked the switch next to the doorway and turned on the overhead bulb, which took a few seconds to blink awake after its considerable hibernation. It took everything just to keep her from retracing the past day’s entire events in this room. A deep breath in through her nose, then out forcefully through her mouth, and her eyes opened again, this time determined to make things clean. If she couldn’t make it right, the least she could do was tidy up.

First, the clothing on the floor. Her black sweater, an undershirt, and a pair of underwear had been haphazardly thrown, so she picked those up first and foremost. Luckily, that was all that remained, since she only had one pair of good jeans and she had hurriedly scooped those up first thing after deciding to get dressed. Into a basket they went with the rest of her dirty clothes, to be dealt with as soon as she could get to an open washing machine (not an easy feat in a base with such a sheer number of people). Next, the quilt. She had to wash that too. Hell, she had to wash all of it. Maybe she would have to do it by hand; whatever was necessary. Her pillow flew across the room after she tossed it aside to rip the fitted sheet off her mattress. A pile of bedding formed on the floor, and after a great deal of exertion trying to remove it as soon as she possibly could, she fell backwards to sit in it. It was comfortable. It still smelled like him.

“God damn it.”


	9. Chapter 9

Gordon’s workspace was currently very quiet. It was typical for there to be much noise where he usually worked, whether from computers and miscellaneous gadgets or simply the bickering of Kleiner and Magnusson, sometimes almost reminiscent of an old married couple. He had found a nice corner of the base that it seemed not many people used, an inside room with enough silence for him to think without it being _too_ silent. All he had to distract him were his thoughts.

His thoughts were the loudest thing of all.

It had been three days now since the last time he spoke to Alyx, and with every hour that passed it got more and more difficult to push out of his mind. There were moments he completely forgot, just a few precious moments where he didn’t live in a world where he had severed one of the most important connections he had, maybe even a world where he was still merely a scientist. And then his brain caught up from the lag, and he remembered what he’d done, and the anxiety pressed down harder on his chest. Every day, it was worse. Sleep hadn’t come easily to him during these nights—how could it? His body didn’t want to rest, it only wanted to feel miserable. Every second he spent unoccupied was a golden opportunity for the shame to trickle in and remind him what a terrible person he was. So instead of going to bed, he reverted to an old tactic from his MIT days, which was the good ol’ _work until you literally pass out of exhaustion_ strategy for getting real, restful sleep.

He couldn’t deny that his eyelids felt heavier every second he tried to keep them propped open. Judith’s chicken scratch below him on the desk was hard enough to decipher when he was energized, so now it was as if he was trying to read an entirely foreign alphabet. Giving his cheeks a handful of good slaps to jolt himself awake, he sat upright from his previous slouch and sucked in a deep breath. He had to focus on this, he promised Isaac that he’d have read this entire portion of their research by the end of the day. It was, what, five in the afternoon now? This deep into the base it was so hard to tell because absolutely no indication of sunlight or circadian rhythm could be found—another similarity to Black Mesa. Those godawful fluorescent lights dug into his corneas then, only a little more than these did now. At least the limited electricity made them dimmer, though he knew that was a ridiculous thing to say about such an unfortunate thing, which he mentally kicked himself for. Still, he preferred it.

Just not nearly as much as he enjoyed that gold lamp in Alyx’s room. The vision of her face in that light was branded into his mind permanently. Even now in his exhausted stupor, he could still see it perfectly, down to the small twinkle in her amber eyes and the shadow the creases of her face caught when she widened her mouth in a laugh. She always looked perfect, no matter how grimy, sweaty, or bloody they always tended to get, but in that light and that moment, Gordon had never seen anything so beautiful. Just then, he realized where his thoughts had drifted and shook himself of them, cursing himself under his breath. The entire point of him staying awake was to avoid those memories, he couldn’t lean into them like that! He blinked hard and stared back down at the notebook before him. _Once we had discovered that the machine successfully teleported nonorganic matter, we decided to perform our first test on a living being. You have most likely heard the unfortunate story of the cat, so I’m going to take the liberty of omitting that from this record . . . ._

“Gordon?”

He quickly jolted up from the table—much _too_ quickly, sending his (thankfully, mostly empty) cup of now cold coffee tipping over and pouring off the side. Oh, great, he had dozed off. “Shit,” he hissed at himself as he lunged for the mug. Coffee continued to drip from the table while he gathered up the papers to rescue them from harm’s way and also tried to pull together his composure. He looked up at the person who had called his name and realized it was Dr. Kleiner.

“Oh, Jesus, I’m sorry,” he scrambled for his words. “I didn’t mean to—”

“No, it’s quite alright. I simply wanted to check in and see how much progress you had made.” He had a fatherly sternness about him, Gordon realized, suddenly feeling himself shrink to the size of a child. “Don’t bother trying to sop that up, it’s going to seep into the concrete before you could possibly make any headway.”

He stared at the puddle and realized that his mentor was correct, it had already begun to turn a more diluted shade of brown. “Oh. Alright, then.”

“…I will admit that that was not my only motivation to come speak with you.”

Gordon froze. He couldn’t possibly know. “What did you want to talk about?”

“Gordon,” he began, terrifying him even further, “I do like to believe that I’m fairly familiar with you. Would you agree?” The younger man nodded silently, and so he continued. “Therefore, I can recognize when you’re perhaps overwhelmed.”

“Overwhelmed? No, not at all. Not even close.”

“Is that so…” Isaac seemed very dissatisfied with that answer. He thought a moment before speaking again. “Would you like to explain to me, then, why I found you unconscious on top of the homework Dr. Mossman gave you?”

Despite his unimposing exterior, Dr. Kleiner knew how to ask the right questions to make those who knew him squirm. Gordon was no exception. Many a debate in the old lecture hall wherein the two of them commonly interacted had been jolted directly to the left by a well-placed prompt that left him reeling, cornered. “I… uh, I was just up late last night working on it. I suppose I didn’t give myself enough time to rest.” _Technically the truth._

“This is exactly what I was concerned would happen. I apologize, I’m afraid I may have put forth an unnecessary amount of urgency for you to catch up on—”

“What? Oh, no, you didn’t do anything wrong, Doctor.”

“Gordon. I’m simply worried that you may be—no, that you _are_ —working far too many hours. If there is anyone who deserves a bit of relaxation, it’s you. For goodness’ sake, it hasn’t even been a week since you returned from the Borealis!”

“I promise you I’m perfectly fine.” _Now_ that _was a lie._

The old man furrowed his white brow, darkening the lines on his face. “This is not the first time I’ve caught you sleeping, this is only the first I have decided to wake you up.”

There it was, he was cornered. Words couldn’t seem to come to mind in that moment; he remained silent, lowering back into his seat, and Isaac continued. “I cannot allow you to continue work on the science team if you do not _slow yourself._ Never in our years of mentorship did I observe you this desperate, and the both of us know that you were insufferably persistent even then!”

“I’m sorry, Dr. Kleiner,” Gordon said down to the empty cup in his hands. “To be perfectly honest, this is all I’ve been able to do lately.”

For a few long moments, Isaac simply stood and stared, at him as well as the room they occupied. Gordon’s workspace was anything but neat, papers and pens strewn haphazardly across the folding table he had stolen to make a desk. Every shred of loose paper he had been writing on was covered margin to margin in scribbles and many coffee stains. It looked like the work of a maniac. He himself admitted to looking like one with his unkempt hair sticking out in every direction on the top; an embarrassing five o’clock shadow had gotten far out of hand and had consumed the usually clean-shaven part of his face. This didn’t even go on to make note of his clothes, wrinkled and messed with as though he’d been wearing them for days (because he had).

“My boy.” Dr. Kleiner’s voice had lowered in volume from the typical, almost theatric tone he so commonly used. There was no second chair at the table in which he could sit, so instead, he simply approached and rested his spindly hands on the edge. “I fail to come to an understanding of what happened to you after the Resonance Cascade, and I’ve made peace with the possibility that I may never know. The fact that you simply disappeared for decades only to stumble into our present showing no signs of wear, that’s… it’s remarkable! Astonishing! You, of course, know how truly grateful I am for that.”

Gordon couldn’t bring himself to make eye contact, but the knot in his throat bobbed as he swallowed hard. Isaac continued, “I know too deeply the toll on me that the past twenty years has taken. However, I know not the damage one who was on the front lines would have had to assume. You have never been eager to complain about anything. You take the hand you’re dealt, so to speak.”

“I’m fine. I promise.” He sighed and sat up straight again. “I just need to focus.”

“Don’t lie to me, Dr. Freeman.” _Damn. You’re good friends with someone for many years and suddenly they know everything about you?_ Kleiner’s eyes dug into Gordon like daggers before he took his former student’s silence as a cue to once again continue his lecture. “Furthermore, please don’t attempt to pretend that I am unaware of your falling out with Alyx.”

His eyes suddenly felt a lot more awake. “You know about that?”

“I assumed. Barney is not as sly as he thinks.”

“Oh, god…” His head fell down to rest on his arms folded over the table. “I can’t believe he told you about that.”

“Well, I had figured well before he confirmed it. That girl practically lives in the science lab on most days, so her sudden absence struck me as odd.”

“…I don’t know what to do, Doctor.” 

“Isaac, if you please.”

“Isaac,” Gordon echoed. “I can’t sleep. I don’t know what to do.”

Kleiner nodded his head, bringing a hand up to stroke his chin. “Hmm, I see. I may have something—a solution that has been nearly foolproof since the beginning of time, in fact!”

“What is it?” He perked up a bit in his chair.

“Communication,” he replied with a sarcastic though well-meaning grin. Gordon slumped back down.

“She doesn’t want to talk to me.”

“Oh, please. If there is anything that I have learned about Alyx in the time I have known her, it’s that she is _needlessly_ stubborn. Even more so than her father was.”

A dry laugh forced itself out. “You’re right about that.”

“She believes that she knows everything about what’s best for her. She also believes that she can solve all of her problems singlehandedly. I think it’s evident that is not the case, and deep down, she knows that, too. Sometimes she requires a bit of nudging.”

Gordon nodded slowly, gazing down at the papers in front of him. He was able to _nudge_ her to allow the memorial service. Perhaps he had more power to speak to her than he assumed—normally, she respected him deeply, followed his leadership, worked side-by-side to form an excellent team. But these were not normal circumstances. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and Alyx had been scorned her entire life, now by someone she had loved.

Had.

“I cannot force you to do anything. In fact, none of this is even remotely my business, and I understand that I’m overreaching. What _is_ my business, however, is your work. As your supervisor I am ordering you to eat a meal, bathe yourself, and sleep. Your progress on this shall be suspended until tomorrow morning.”

Dr. Kleiner turned to leave, looking back for a moment to offer one last word of encouragement, “Take care of yourself. I know too well that this is the only life you have,” before exiting the small room, leaving Gordon alone.

God, as much as he hated it, he was right. He couldn’t cower in this room anymore. He had tried to ignore the fact that eventually, no matter what, he would have to face her and would need to have prepared something to say. His current plan of hiding in here and not sleeping was going to completely fail him sooner rather than later. This needed to be abandoned. Plus, he had to admit to himself that a shower sounded amazing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is nothing in writing than I hate more than dialogue. Every time I try to write dialogue, it's rough, it's choppy, I run out of things for them to say, and it's generally a thing I despise and avoid. This chapter definitely needs polish eventually, but I'm surprised with how well it turned out!


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just wanted to let y'all know I almost cried writing this chapter. Enjoy.

A hot shower, check. A hot meal, check. Now, he just had to complete the third step on Dr. Kleiner’s list of demands: sleep. His body screamed for it as he lay in his bed, staring out into the pitch darkness of his room, but his thoughts raced. No matter how tired he was, no matter how deeply his aching head craved a release from the toils of the day or week, if he had enough on his mind it was basically impossible to shut off. He had not slept—not truly—in two entire days. By every single gauge on the planet, he was _exhausted,_ beyond any level of fatigue he could ever comprehend besides the days spent awake at Black Mesa and on missions with Alyx, both during which he was heavily assisted by a constant flow of adrenaline through the HEV suit. He was determined never to wear that horrible thing again if he could help it, but laying there now he did miss the ability to keep his energy up.

Three days since he last spoke to Alyx. Three days of some of the most exciting work he’d ever seen—for God’s sake, _teleportation!_ This was something that he had strived to one day perhaps see only a glimpse of, and now here he was operating alongside some of the most brilliant minds that the world could possibly ask for, and he had experienced it firsthand. Three days of trying his best to catch up to twenty years of scientific advancements, Combine technology, revolution history, and whatever happened to that poor cat. Three days of slowly spiraling into debility as his energy left him as well as any motivation to even try taking care of himself. He felt as though he didn’t deserve to take care of himself. This was, in some way, a sick punishment. The shower and food helped him slow the descent, though, and it gave him enough clarity to realize what a stupid notion it was to give himself a sentence. Who did that benefit?

He’d been lying there for probably forty-five minutes when he came to this train of thought. His body felt heavy, sinking into the mattress below him, but that wasn’t enough to allow him rest. _I’m not going to be able to sleep until I talk to her._

“I can’t,” he replied to himself aloud. His own voice startled him. _I can’t look at her right now._

A rebel had stopped him in the hall to point out his white coat, and they’d gotten to talking—the first pleasant conversation with a stranger Gordon had had in a very long time. And then she’d gone flying past, and all he thought to do was call her name, but she didn’t even hesitate. It was like she hadn’t heard him. He knew she did. Even seeing her as a blur running past, only catching a back view before she disappeared towards the exterior doors of the silo, was so horribly painful. If he tried to look at her again, look into her eyes, he wouldn’t have the strength to go on with even this level of composure he had struggled to muster. The phrase “if looks could kill” was terribly familiar to him, but in this case he felt it was more literal than it had ever been in his life. Her gaze could murder him in half a second if she wanted to, and as far as he was concerned, he had been given the death penalty.

But if he didn’t, he couldn’t sleep. And he really, _really_ needed to sleep.

Psychosis. That’s what happens to people who don’t sleep. You go a few nights without rest, even as few as four, you begin hallucinating. Five, paranoia. Six, you might as well be dead. Two nights (nearly three) wasn’t so bad, but the thought of letting himself dive into that horrifying bag of symptoms gave him a deep enough anxiety to rouse him from his bed. Even after his bath he looked terrible, sunken in, gray, like a zombie minus its headcrab. Maybe he should be more worried about being accidentally shot than staying up long enough to go insane.

Hesitantly and quietly, he creaked open the door to his room and peered into the hall. It was only seven or so in the evening at this point and the base was still as active as ever. Hopefully she would be in her room. With a deep breath, he knocked, and waited there in his ridiculous pajamas.

No answer. 

He knocked again.

“Oh. Sorry,” he heard from inside. A few seconds later, the door opened to reveal her there, donning her usual jeans and a faded, green, cotton shirt with the sleeves cut off at the elbows. The only thing he could do was take her in. All the words he had planned abandoned him at once, leaving him standing there with a completely empty head. That is, until his mind caught up with his eyes and realized that she looked utterly horrified. “Gordon. You look terrible, are you okay?”

Her worried gaze scared him much more than anger ever could’ve. Pity was the last thing he expected from her. “…No.” Well, that was true, though abrupt.

“Oh…” He felt painfully exposed as her eyes traveled from his sickly face down his body, most likely taking in every detail of his miserable coil. She said nothing.

“Alyx.” Her head popped back up to look at his face again when she heard her name. “I… I can’t…” _Gather your words, you idiot._ “I haven’t slept. I just ate for the first time in three days. I’ve been subsisting on coffee. Do you know what that does to a person? I don’t think you want to.”

He could tell by the look on her face that he was sounding much too accusative. “Alyx, I’m so sorry.” He took a step forward to touch her and she immediately pulled her arms over her chest and backed away.

“Don’t. _Don’t._ ”

“Please,” he whispered pitifully.

“You look _pathetic,_ Gordon.”

“…I know.”

“Did you stop taking care of yourself?”

He paused and sighed shakily. “It hasn’t been easy.”

“Shit…” Alyx took another step backwards and began pacing around the small room. “I can’t believe this. I cannot believe you.”

“W…what?”

Suddenly halting her movements, she turned to him. “Did you come here just to make me feel bad?”

_”What? No—!”_

“Really? Because I’ve been doing my damndest to give you your space and now you’ve shown up at my door looking like… like a wet puppy!”

Her words pierced his chest harder than bullets. “Why would I… Is that who you think I am?”

“I don’t know who I think you are anymore.”

“I came here because I _miss you!_ ” That shut her up. “I came here and told you how awful I’ve felt because I can’t figure out how to function anymore without you there! You’re all I can think about, every single second of my day, and that’s why I can’t sleep either! I miss you. I miss you so much it _hurts. It hurts me._ Why would I _ever_ do something to intentionally hurt you, do you think I would do that? After everything, do you really think I’d do that to you?”

She stared intently at him, moving her eyes from his face downward to further examine his disheveled body. He knew that look—she was trying to find her next set of words. And from the amount of time it was taking her, she was choosing very carefully. Without warning, her expression of defensive anger crumbled away to despair and exhaustion. Reacting to his clearly taken-aback expression, she turned and rested her hand on the dresser behind her, putting most of her weight on her arm, the other hand coming up to hide her eyes. “I’m sorry. I can’t blame you for this.”

“Blame me…?”

“Yes,” she whispered, circling back to face him again, hand still clutching the dresser. “None of this is your fault. You said you took advantage of me?” She shook her head. “I did.”

His brow turned upwards in a worried expression. He tried to offer a small smile to break the tension. “I don’t feel taken advantage of.”

“Gordon…”

“No, honestly,” he began, moving a step towards her. “I don’t. Not even close. I just felt horrible about it, and I… I thought you’d be happier if I left.”

She looked up to meet his eyes and her own filled with longing. “That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever done. And I’ve watched you fall through three unsteady floors in the span of a few hours.” A small grin cracked through her sadness, and he laughed.

“You’re right. But you don’t know half of the stupid things I’ve done.”

“Oh, god,” she snickered, “I’m terrified to find out.”

The two of them stood there in complete silence for a few long seconds before Alyx let out a heavy sigh and snaked her arms around his side, wrapping him into a tight hug. No hesitation preceded Gordon’s decision to take her in his own arms and bury his face in her soft black hair. He felt her fingers claw at his shirt as if she was holding on for dear life; one of his hands lifted from her shoulder to the back of her head, cradling it gently and with great care. Another set of moments passed, and she pulled just far enough away to look up at his face. “You’re not angry?”

He smiled down at her. “No. Are you?”

“Not anymore.”

“Are you… okay?”

Alyx pulled away from his arms and hesitated for a moment, then went to sit down on her bed. She leaned her elbows against her knees and pressed her hands to her forehead once again, an almost iconic move, Gordon had slowly come to find out over the months they spent together.

“Alyx?” He slowly decided to follow her and stood at the side of the bed, testing the waters. She didn’t move. He took this as a cue that it was okay to sit down.

“I’m sorry, Gordon. I shouldn’t have been so cold.”

“I shouldn’t have run away. I probably would’ve done the same thing as you.”

Grateful amber eyes gazed up at his, and his heart skipped a beat. As quickly as it had the first time, though, it stopped again when he realized that there were tears forming in front of them. Her lip quivered slightly before she bit it to hold it back, letting out a small shudder. “I missed you, too. God, I missed you. I’ve been falling apart.”

“At least you don’t look like me,” he laughed, prompting her to as well as she sniffed and rubbed her eyes.

She paused and then replied, “You look like you got hit by a train,” prompting the two of them to laugh even harder. While her laugh was always a thing of beauty, an instant cure for any ailment that could ever come his way, today in particular it was sweeter than it had ever sounded. The hole that had been growing in his chest was closing now, all because of her. Of course the solution to this problem was her—what else could it ever have been? No matter what, whether they went on to become lovers or simply stay joined at the hip as friends, partners in crime, it didn’t matter. She was the answer to every question he had ever asked. Her being there was enough.

Gordon continued to bask in the glow of her smile until a painful realization pierced him and his own face melted into graveness. That feeling, that desperate, horrible, agonizing, gnawing pulling in his chest that something was missing from him—it was all too familiar, and he had finally put his finger on why. “I haven’t felt like that since the mines.”

The antlion caves. The dilapidated silo where Alyx’s cold body had been carried and laid down by the Vortigaunt who had happened to be in the right place at the right time as she was impaled and left to rot and all he could do was watch and beg himself to get the courage to scream. He had only known her for a few days then, and yet it was like he’d watched his world get crushed before his eyes. The mines themselves came to him in blurry flashes; they say you remember moments of fear more vividly than others because of adrenaline, but Gordon wasn’t sure how true that was since that was one of the scariest days of his entire life, closely following the Black Mesa Incident on the list of really, really shitty days he’d had. He remembered dark, cold, slimy walls of smooth rock, the shock of ice cold water hitting his face as he dove down, corridors full of antlion grubs and gallons of blood left by their unlucky predecessors, only brief zaps, like snapshots. The thing he remembered the most was her body on the table, barely holding onto life, and the split-second after the Vortigaunt had announced that her heart had stopped, and him struggling to remember if his own was still capable of beating.

“The Citadel core.” She snapped him out of his downward spiral by mirroring his dark expression. “I thought I was sending you to your death.”

The memory of marching through the innermost corridors of the Citadel sent a wave of exhaustion through his already-fatigued body. That was the quintessence of the phrase _running on fumes_ —there was absolutely no way either of them would’ve made it out of there the second time without that glitch with the gravity gun, nor without him wearing the supercharged HEV suit into the core room itself. The radiation in that room had probably lowered his lifespan by ten years.

He only realized he had been spacing out again when he caught a glimpse of her raised eyebrow from his peripheral, causing him to tune back in with a hint of embarrassment on his face. “You good?”

“Uh, staying up for two days straight is starting to catch up with me,” he replied with a tired smirk.

That was probably the wrong thing to say; Alyx’s face sunk again as she broke eye contact to look at the tattered rug on her floor. “I’m really sorry.”

“Please stop apologizing, Alyx,” he sighed. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

When she didn’t reply, the best thing Gordon could think to do, since words weren’t coming to him easily, was put his arms around her shoulders again. She immediately leaned into his chest and gripped the arm in front of her with both of her hands.

“…Gordon, I… need to get something off my chest.”

That was, by far, the scariest thing he’d ever heard her say. He loosened his grip on her and allowed her to sit up to face him. Her face looked worryingly grim.

After a breath, she began her speech. “I _really_ love you. You don’t have to say anything. You don’t have to say it back, I know it’s… it’s a lot, and we haven’t known each other very long. But I do. And I don’t know what you want now, but no matter what it is, I’m okay with it. As long as you’re still with me I’m okay with anything. I just can’t go another day knowing… knowing I can’t talk to you.”

He froze. His tired brain began skipping like a scratched CD. The only detail of the real world that he could process as his head reeled and tried its best to put the words he’d just heard into a context—any context—that made sense, was growing panic on her face. “Shit. Shit, I’m sorry, that was horrible timing—”

She threw her hands behind her like she was about to hoist herself up off the bed and leave, but before she could make another move he grabbed her arm farthest from him and turned her towards him. Her eyes only grew wider as his hands rose up to cup her jaw, and he took her in for a small moment before leaning in to kiss her.

If the last time he’d kissed her felt like he had waited a lifetime, this one felt like an eternity. Her small hands, usually strong, were gentle as they caressed the small of his back; she leaned into him and kissed him like it was the first time all over again. Every shred of regret and doubt that clouded his memory of their night together after the memorial service completely lifted. This was right. He had never been surer of anything in his life, this was where he was supposed to be. He suddenly didn’t care about the things that had scared him before—the fear of things falling apart, the fear of her recovering from her grief and changing her mind, the fear of them somehow being separated by every terrible thing that had ever and would ever happen to them—they had overcome so much. For God’s sake, their lives were intertwined, though he still wasn’t entirely sure what that meant for them. She had saved his life so many times, and he had saved her, and he felt that there wasn’t anything they couldn’t survive together. 

They pulled away just inches apart to look at each other. Gordon’s hands stayed glued to her jaw, one of his thumbs stroking her cheek as she smiled at him, forming the crease around her mouth he loved so much. Her eyes suddenly squinted playfully in the way they always did before she cracked a joke, and she broke the soft quiet that had fallen over them. “So I’m guessing that means you want to be friends.”

He laughed and leaned his head forward to rest against hers. “Yes, exactly. I’m glad we’re on the same page.”

They met in another series of small pecks before Alyx let go of his back and shifted backwards on the bed, creating a few more inches of space between them. His hands fell away from her face and instead took a new place around one of her hands. She was so gorgeous. That bedside lamp, the one he missed so much and previously hurt every time he remembered it, left an outline of shimmering gold all around her silhouette and made her look… angelic.

“…You want to hear something ridiculous?”

She raised an eyebrow and smirked. “Um, okay?”

“I’m sitting next to the most beautiful woman in the entire world,” he began, and she grinned and looked away, “and the only thing I can think about is how tired I am.”

“Oh my god, Gordon, you need sleep!” Alyx laughed, nudging his shoulder with her free hand. “Even _I_ know not to stay up for almost three days.”

After pausing to think for a moment, she released her hand from his grip and motioned to him to scoot up closer to her as she crept back into a supine position. He sighed in relief and more than happily took her invitation to rest his head on her chest and drape an arm over her abdomen. She was so warm and soft despite her brawn, a faint, sweet scent on her skin drawing his face into the crook above her collarbone. She allowed him to settle in on the bed and get comfortable, then rested a hand on his arm that was wrapped around her and her other hand on his back, which she slowly rubbed back and forth. He could’ve fallen asleep in seconds no matter what, but that was the icing on a very, very soothing cake that helped him drift off faster than he probably ever had.

This left Alyx awake by herself for a while. She couldn’t have minded any less. For starters, she felt that it would’ve been such a waste for her to try and go to sleep instead of staying up to breathe him in, to feel the weight of him against her, completely vulnerable and relaxed in her presence. She wanted to stay up as long as it would take for her to ingrain this in her memory for the rest of her life. And secondly, she had far too many thoughts zooming around in her head to allow her to rest; she felt like her entire body was full of butterflies—not even isolated to her stomach—that had all taken flight the exact moment his lips met hers and had not calmed down long enough to let her breathe ever since. It was a good thing that he was weighing her down, or else she might float away.

She continued to stroke his back, eventually moving to twirling his hair between her fingers, and stared up at the ceiling, unable to contain the smiles that just kept on coming to her face. If not for the fear of waking him up (though she figured that would be a difficult task), she would’ve let herself laugh hysterically. Alyx Vance was completely and utterly giddy. There was a cute boy asleep on her chest, a man who she knew would never dream of giving up on her, even if it meant trading his life for hers. She looked down at him and carefully plucked the glasses off his face, which he, even in his sleep, seemed to appreciate. Just out of curiosity, she raised them to her own eyes and immediately cringed. _Jesus Christ, how blind is he?!_

No thank you, she thought, folding the spectacles up and setting them in their rightful place on the corner of her nightstand. “I bet they called you four-eyes as a kid, huh?” she murmured. “I don’t know if I can really blame them.”

Once again, she looked down at his sound-asleep face. Thank god he wasn’t a snorer. That may have been a deal-breaker. “How do you look so cute when you sleep? It’s not fair. I just want to stay up all night and watch you.”

Her heart stopped for a second when he shifted in his sleep—he quickly stopped, though, and she sighed. _I bet the Strider alarm wouldn’t even wake him up at this point._

At some point in the night she lost track of time completely, and she really didn’t care. Sleep (somehow) eventually took priority over petting the sweet man asleep next to her, and it was probably one of the best nights of rest she had had in years.


	11. Chapter 11

When was the last time Alyx went to bed before eight o’clock at night? It had probably been years since the world had allowed her to rest that early; her duties for most of her life made it difficult to rise and set with the sun as one would have before the Incident. Occasionally, she would let herself drift into a daydream world where the events of that day had been nothing more than ordinary, a world where she had the opportunity to grow up _normally_. She and her parents could’ve stayed together at Black Mesa as she got older, she could’ve grown old enough to remember sitting in her father’s lap while he worked at a computer like he claimed she had as a baby. She could’ve remembered her mom’s voice. Alyx tried her best not to dwell on all the things she’d missed out on by being denied a pre-apocalyptic childhood. There were a lot of things she could’ve gained, and even more things she could’ve avoided losing. But there were two things she was grateful for. The first was the fact that there was simply never a dull moment around here—if she would’ve spent her childhood sitting in a classroom or in front of a television rather than learning how to shoot guns and tinker with complicated machinery, she couldn’t deny that she would’ve been bored out of her mind. The second thing that she appreciated from all of this, of course, was the man who was still fast asleep and curled up against the wall in the tiny bed they had managed to share again.

“Gordon,” she whispered with amusement as she turned from her back to her side to face him. One of her hands came up to stroke his shoulder. No response; he might as well have been comatose. _It’s been nine hours, how is he still asleep?_

_”Gordon…”_ she repeated, singing slightly and propping herself up on her elbow to look over his shoulder. His hair was all kinds of messy, sticking up every which-way like static electricity. His eyes were tightly shut and a closed hand came up to cover part of his face. “Gordon, it’s gonna be light out soon.”

Suddenly, he stirred a bit, making a tired, inquiring noise not very different from the sound cats make when they’re woken up. The hand over his face unraveled from the fist it had formed before and instead went flat to drag from his eyes down to his chin. “What time is it?” he strained.

“5:30.” As he leaned back to look at her she took the opportunity to tuck her hand under his arm and embrace his chest. He let out a groan of protest at the time. “Not a morning person, are you?” she teased.

Laughing under his breath, he replied, “Not at all.” He clutched her hand for a moment before turning over to face her and pulling her in—not that they could get much closer on the single bed. “I can’t complain, though.”

She beamed. The proximity of his face to hers blurred the edges of his features just slightly. His eyes twitched back and forth as they scanned her eyes, occasionally darting down for a second to explore her lips; she knew what that meant, and figured it would be senselessly cruel to deny him what he was subtly hoping for. Hand on his stubbly jaw as he’d done for her the evening before, she closed her eyes and kissed him, only backing away no more than an inch afterwards. His gaze was so soft when his eyes opened again.

“You don’t plan on running out of here again, right?”

“No. Absolutely not.”

Her smile grew even wider as she lifted her hand from his jaw to run through his hair. “Good.”

Her bearings were taken from her and it took a moment for her to catch up to what had happened—she let out a playful scream when she realized he had quite suddenly grabbed her with both of his arms and hoisted her to lay on top of him in a bear hug. She began laughing. _“Gordon!”_

“Shhhh,” he chuckled back, still, of course, maintaining his tight grip. “We can afford to stay here for a while.”

“I’m so not going to let you go back to sleep.”

Gordon closed his eyes and settled into the bed a little more. “You’re not the boss of me…”

“Uh, yes I am!” Wriggling one of her arms free, she reared back and lightly smacked the side of his face. He just laughed and let out a pained grunt.

“That’s abuse. I’m going to report you.”

_“Oh_ , okay. To who?”

“...I think it’s ‘whom.’”

A cold glare stabbed him, but he continued his inconspicuous grin. She shook her head in deep disappointment and frustration. “You’re lucky you’re pretty.”

His grin widened, clearly proud of himself, and she couldn’t help but crack her angry façade. The two of them shared a few seconds of quiet giggles as she decided to surrender her struggle and nestle into him. The urgency of morning crept in the back of her mind; she was definitely not used to the luxury of staying in bed for long after waking as there was just too much work to be done usually. Of course there still was work that needed attention, and there always would be no matter what happened in the future, but the immediacy of the Combine’s constant, looming threat had vanished. Stragglers, rogue soldiers and “chickenshit” CPs as Barney had said, still remained in the area and most likely in other regions of the remaining Earth. The closure of the portal had left all soldiers stranded, cut off from Overwatch, awaiting orders that would never come. Anticitizen One, the owners of the transmission that had been stolen, was still their target, and probably would be until they all either died or gave up. Alyx’s work never ended, but she had to admit to herself that she could easily afford to spend a few extra minutes relaxing. Relaxation. Taking it easy. _Stopping to rest for more than thirty seconds._ This was a completely foreign concept to her, which explained her feeling of exigency to get up and continue moving. Gordon, on the other hand, had experienced plenty of relaxation, taking it easy, stopping to rest for _many_ more seconds than thirty. There weren’t words to describe how hard he’d been worked over the past few months. Due to his odd set of circumstances, he was probably one of the last people on the planet who could vividly remember what it was like before the Cascade.

She could almost see it in her mind—a clean apartment somewhere nice, maybe MIT, in a building operated by a compassionate human being and not the Combine. The windows open, a cool breeze, real food in the refrigerator, bountiful electricity. The street below bustled with people wearing new clothes, clothing they had bought with the money they earned at jobs they enjoyed, and cars driving around on the roads instead of tanks. The people in the city all lived there because they wanted to, not because they were coerced or outright forced with the threat of death—or worse, conversion—hanging over their heads. If they wanted to move somewhere else they were well within their right to, all they needed was the money and they could just go wherever they wanted. They could get in their car, their perfectly safe and shiny car with real doors on it, and they could drive from Massachusetts to any other state in the old United States they wanted. That was almost completely incomprehensible to her. Life had once been so easy. Maybe the boredom of not being worried about survival was what drove Black Mesa to bring about the end of the world.

She felt his breathing under her as she laid her head just under his chin, burrowed beside his neck. His arms curled around her and held her tight, hers tucked between his shoulders and the bed. “I guess I wore you down,” he hummed.

“A few more minutes couldn’t hurt,” she confessed. “But it’s not my fault if you’re late for work.”

“Kleiner suspended me until I got some sleep, I don’t think he’s expecting me back at any particular time.”

Alyx snorted. “My dad said you were an hour late for work the day of the Incident.”

“I was not an _hour late!”_ Gordon exclaimed before bringing his voice down to a more appropriate volume. “…Only forty minutes…”

“Oh, my god.” She shook her head as well as she could laying in the crook of his jaw. His voice was so close as he spoke practically into her ear, and she heard the deeper vibrations in his throat and chest. His laughter at her remark shook her entire body and she reveled in it. The guttural sound of him laughing when she was pressed right up against his body was better than any music, and now she was sure she made the right decision to stay for a little while longer. Soon her body would begin to cry for breakfast, and she was confident she would be able to keep it in this time, but right now she would ignore that need to be able to lie here with him.

A blanket of quiet covered them, the only sounds in the room being their breath and each other’s heartbeats, which the two of them could feel through their close contact. It didn’t take much time for the rise and fall of their chests to synchronize, bringing them into almost perfect unison and doing well to remind them of their vortescent fate. Alyx realized that her partner must’ve been on a similar train of thought when she felt his hand come down to feel the deep scars on her back, left there gratuitously what seemed like forever ago. She was lucky to be alive, and that was something she remembered every hour of every day, but with as much work as the Vorts did to bring her back, they didn’t manage to rid her of the gashes completely, leaving very big, very pink circles where through-and-through stab wounds once resided. Gordon’s fingers pressed excruciatingly carefully on one of the scars, as if he was afraid she’d break again under his touch. She supposed he was just reminding himself that they were still there.

“You know I’m okay, right?” She lifted her head and weighted herself on her elbows to look him in his sparkling eyes. Her impulse to laugh had to be stifled as she realized that, considering he hadn’t yet put his glasses on for the day, even mere inches from his face, she was most likely blurry from his perspective.

He sighed and let a small smile peek through. The hand that had been stroking her back now reached to push a few of her stray hairs behind her ear; she hadn’t yet pulled it back like she usually did in the morning, either. “I know.”

“You worry about me too much, Gordon,” she began, smiling back at him. “Have I gotten badly hurt a single time after that?”

“…No.”

“Exactly. I’m good. _You,_ on the other hand,” she laughed, “have gotten a little too reckless.”

“ _Me?_ Reckless? When?”

“You almost killed yourself trying to get us off the damn Borealis!”

“Pff, that wasn’t recklessness, that was heroism.”

She furrowed her brow. “It was _stupid_ is what it was.”

“…I’ll take that. It was kind of stupid.”

“Kind of,” she scoffed, though still all in good fun. “Dr. Gordon Freeman of MIT was dumb enough to try and sacrifice himself when he didn’t even need to.”

“Okay, to be fair, at the time I thought we were all going to die.”

The manner in which he said that—so nonchalantly—prodded something in her chest. Gravity settled and caused her to realize what a morbid conversation this truly was, even though they were both smiling. They did almost die on that ship, and he did almost give his life to save them and the rest of the world, yet again. Her face fell, and he immediately noticed. “Sorry,” she whispered.

“Don’t be.” He shook his head, solemn as she was for a moment, before cracking another smile. _”You know I’m okay, right?”_

“Don’t use my own words against me,” Alyx chuckled, though she was still shaken. The temptation to lean forward and kiss him again was too much to ignore and she gave in to it, to which he responded by putting one hand back in her hair and the other around her upper back. They smiled against each other’s lips as they pulled each other closer. All of that was in the past. The present was all either of them needed to think about now.

After a considerable amount of time enjoying their _present activity,_ Alyx, by some kind of miracle, managed to fall asleep again. This fact was in no way upsetting to her partner, absolutely happy to stay in their warm bed and continue to twirl her wavy hair around his fingers and listen to her breathing. She no longer lay directly on top of him, having slid down into the nook between him and the wall. Even despite the full, restful night of sleep he had awoken from, the allure of her warmth and her gentle, even breaths drew him closer to unconsciousness once again. There was no way she ever could’ve gotten him out of this bed before six o’clock, anyway.

Two hearts beat side-by-side, in perfect synchrony. It was completely still outside of the room this early in the morning; even the base’s early-birds were only just getting their coffee. Nothing dared move or make a noise to disturb their sleep, their soft moments together in the dim, golden room. It was perfect.

\---

“Oh my god, Gordon, wake up!”

“Huh? Whuh—“ was the most accurate imitation of words that his still-asleep brain could conjure. “What happened…?”

Alyx stopped shaking him and sat up all the way. “It’s _eight!_ We fell back asleep!”

“...Uh-huh…?”

“We need to _get up._ ” 

A noise came out of him that resided somewhere between a groan and a sigh, and he rose from the bed to sit up. When he secured his glasses on his nose he saw Alyx frantically jumping around the room, trying to change her clothes to report upstairs, and even in his half-asleep stupor he grinned. She was a very laid back person, considering the circumstances she grew up in, but her easy-going attitude probably revolved around some kind of routine—one where letting the sun rise before her didn’t happen, and it _especially_ wasn’t the fault of a man who decided to sleep over. “Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked, eyebrow raised, having halted in the middle of the room right after putting on a new shirt.

“Just enjoying the view,” he teased, and as a result got pelted in the face by the clothing she’d just replaced.

A roll of her eyes accompanied a playful scoff. “Take it in while you can, you nerd.”

“Are you at least going to eat breakfast?”

She reached for her hairbrush on the old, worn-out cedar dresser opposite to her bed, shaking her head as she lifted the brush to her scalp. “I can’t be any later than I already am, Gordon.”

“Late for _what?_ You know no one’s going to care that you slept in.” He lifted himself off the bed and trudged over to her. Immediately recognizing his tactic—using her weakness against her, his pleading green eyes—she smirked and turned away. He followed her and continued to goad her. “You really don’t have time for a bowl of oatmeal?”

“Gordon!” she laughed. “A bowl of oatmeal is going to turn into an hour-long conversation and then you’re going to beg me to stay again. I have to go.”

“But—”

“Dinner, okay? Go see Dr. Kleiner.” He sighed in concession, pulling her in for one last hug before he was forced to leave the comfort of this little room and her. She lingered for a moment, hands on his arms, a sweet gaze, before backing away and grasping for her headband on the night table. “I’ll catch you later.”

“Bye, Alyx.” Smiling, he exited the room, closing the door behind him, and trudged down the hall to his own, still in his pajamas and socks. Good lord, he could breathe again; he could now go to work and _enjoy it,_ knowing that when the day was done she’d be waiting for him. What more could he ask for?

Breakfast, probably. Regardless of whether Alyx cared to join him, his stomach wasn’t about to let him fast again anytime soon. Get dressed, then food. The best and most mundane plan he’d made in a long time.


	12. Chapter 12

“Well, I followed your orders, Doctor.”

In a fresh change of work clothes covered with a white coat, Gordon stood behind the open gate of the lift that brought him down to the level at which the scientists and engineers were always hard at work. He knew he looked significantly healthier than the last time his old friend had seen him, two rounded meals fuller and plenty well-rested. His sudden arrival on this floor of the base startled the poor old man, who quickly emitted a noise of concern and swiveled in his chair to greet the sudden intrusion. “Ah! Yes, that’s excellent! You no longer look as though you have one foot already in the grave.”

He couldn’t help but laugh—after all, he knew it was the truth. He stepped off the metal lift into the room and approached Kleiner’s desk. “You’ll probably be pleased to know that Alyx and I made up, too.”

“Oh, I saw her practically beaming earlier this morning. She’s a generally cheerful young lady, but there aren’t many things in the world that can make her smile quite like _that,”_ teased his old mentor. Gordon felt himself beginning to flush, and was extremely grateful that Isaac had returned his gaze to his work. “I extend my deepest congratulations to you both.” 

“W-well, thank you,” he stammered in reply. “Do you, uh, have my folder of notes?”

“Oh! Yes, I do.” He sat his pencil down and rose from his chair, setting off to find what Gordon had left behind the evening before. His voice lowered to a mumble. “Now, where did I leave that dreaded thing…? Aha.”

The thick manila folder passed from one man’s hands to the other’s, along with the composition book in which Dr. Mossman had done her best to summarize the team’s research. He truly wondered how on earth she did it. With everything she’d gone through, the Combine, the loss of Eli who he knew she had to have been extremely close to, her strained relationship with Alyx—she was incredibly strong, not to mention brilliant. The work they had been doing here during his… hibernation… seemed like science fiction. Absolutely unfathomable and impossible, even after the things he had seen back at Black Mesa even at the turn of the millennium. It was now, what, the mid 2020s? Decades of dismantling this completely otherworldly, ridiculously advanced tech and using it to their advantage; a team of geniuses from the very top of their field working together in the bleakest circumstances. And she had managed, to the very best of her abilities, to put it all in one notebook. 

“Is Dr. Moss— uh, Judith around today?”

Dr. Kleiner returned to his workspace and picked his pencil, worn with teethmarks, back up. “She is. She’s right down the hall.”

“Alright. I have a few questions for her, so I think I’ll work in there today.”

“That sounds like a wise plan.” The younger of the two turned to depart, but was cut off. “Wait just a moment, Gordon.” 

“Sir?”

“I simply want to remind you that no one expects you to absorb all of this information right away. You may take all the time you need. I’m aware that some of your unhealthy motivation stemmed from personal issues, but I know your drive. Please try not to let it consume you.”

 _Thanks, Dad._ “I’ll try,” he chuckled, a hint of gratitude hidden in his voice. He gave his old friend a nod before leaving to find Judith. 

\---

It was true. Alyx beamed. Sure, she was aware that she couldn’t go around with a giant grin plastered on her face or people would start staring, maybe think something was wrong with her, so clearly she tried her best to control her facial expressions. But the happiness radiated out of her even still, sunbeams, an aura of yellow and gold and a million cheerful colors. She felt it in the air around her, like lightning. She was so happy. 

The instinct to want to get out of bed and arrive to make herself useful had proven accurate, as it was revealed as soon as she jogged up to the ground level that they were having an array of mechanical issues, and it was all hands on deck. Not exactly an uncommon sight with how unstable a lot of their technology was and always had been; failing generators, Combine electronics malfunctioning due to their unconventional techniques of jailbreaking them, so to speak, just to name only a handful of the things they were burdened with taking care of. Her father had always argued, though, that it was better than the ridiculously slow computers of the late twentieth century the poor staff was forced to work with back at Black Mesa. Hard drives taking up an entire room that held an utterly disappointing amount of data? She could hardly imagine. 

The prodigy engineer found herself wedged in between a catwalk below her and a very stubborn panel above, whose wires seemed to decide they just felt like throwing in the towel for no particular reason. Those wires carried power to a row of quite important machines, she was told, though she wasn’t actually entirely sure what they did. All she knew were two things: one, that she was incredibly grateful Magnusson wasn’t down here barking at her to _hurry up and fix the damned thing,_ and two, that her arms were starting to get really sore working on her back like this.

Her usual fingerless gloves were swapped for a pair of more electricity-safe insulated gloves, and she donned a pair of goggles on her face to prevent any damage from sparking or whatever other dangerous particles might fancy a visit to her eyeballs. She’d been doing this kind of thing for as long as she could possibly remember, since she was old enough for Eli to trust that she could remember what wires were safe to touch and which ones would kill their victim on contact. It was suitable to her that even one of the most mundane tasks she was responsible for completing still held a high risk. Luckily, she knew what she was doing. 

“Hey Vance, how’s it goin’ up there?”

“It’s definitely going,” Alyx replied down to the person who had entered the room. She didn’t have to look down to recognize it was Reese, another of many mechanics and engineers that kept White Forest from collapsing. She could see in her mind the picture of the middle-aged woman with her blonde hair slicked back tightly and securely in a ponytail, toolbelt on her hip along with her gloved hands. “I don’t think it’ll take me more than another… mm, twenty minutes to get it back up.”

Reese nodded with approval. “That’s good. Dr. Hothead’s gonna be storming in here soon if it’s not.”

“Geez. I’d like to see him up here.”

“Lord, so would I. Well, I’ll catch you in a bit. Probably have another job for you when I do.”

“Aye aye, Captain.” Alyx sent down a salute with her left hand, accompanied by a cheeky grin. Reese only rolled her eyes and returned a smirk before turning back through the doorway. 

And so she resumed her work in solitude. Her humming filled the room as she tinkered away at the panel, and slowly the zen and natural focus that came when she worked with her hands fell over her once more. As long as no one was yelling at her, she could do this all day. She just couldn’t let herself forget about dinner. 

\---

A knock at the open door, and Judith rotated in her chair, immediately excited to see the visitor. “Gordon! Come in, please, sit down, if you have time.” He tried to make his presence less imposing as she panicked to get papers and books out of the way to give him a place to sit. It was a small office with an old CRT television fashioned into a monitor to an amalgamous computer that sat atop a large cedar desk. Files, papers, pens, books, more papers—the thing was trashed. The floor was the only surface not consumed by work; equations and scribbled notes covered a chalkboard on one wall, another wall inhabited by a great big cork board to which torn pieces of notebook paper were pinned. “Forgive me for the mess, it’s been difficult trying to pull all of this old research out of their respective boxes.” 

“Oh, it’s fine,” he assured her, taking his place in the other office chair she had cleared for him. “I completely understand, trust me.”

That seemed to put her at some semblance of ease, as she shrunk down from her tensed state to her usual posture, as though she needed a moment to remember that she was talking to a fellow physicist who had done plenty of the late nights everyone in the field tended to pull. Black Mesa’s fitness standards must’ve been much, much lower than he remembered. 

“Well I appreciate that. What brings you by, is everything going alright with your reading?”

“Yes, everything is great. It’s… well, it’s remarkable, actually.” He laughed quietly and shook his head, tightening his grip on the items in his hands. “I don’t get how you consolidated all of this so well! Twenty years, that’s a lot to try and catch me up on.”

Judith let out a sweet laugh, flustered. “If I had woken up this morning knowing you were going to rain compliments over me it would’ve made the day much more bearable.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Oh, we’ve been having a tremendous number of mechanical difficulties today. It’s made things interesting, to say the least. Computers, power lines, it’s been one thing after the other.”

She sighed as she spoke, words rolling out of her mouth like it was another day at the office. Gordon’s blood ran cold in his veins. The last time computers weren’t working on another day at the office…

“Dr. Freeman? Is everything alright?”

Judith must’ve caught the terror in his eyes. He blinked fast and immediately gave his attention down to the notebook in his hands. “U-uh, yes, I just… I had a few questions for you. One about the, um,” he trailed off as he flipped through the book, looking for a specific page. “The manifold parameters. Specifically about the orbifold, if you wouldn’t mind elaborating on that.”

“Oh, of course. That may not have been entirely clear, it was a tricky thing to try and summarize.” The ballpoint pen that was in her hand dropped to the desk as she turned to face him directly on, and she dove into an explanation. He didn’t hear a word she said. His heartbeat was getting harder and harder in his chest, the gushing of blood past his ears growing louder and more difficult to tune out. 

_I had a bunch of messages for you, but we had a system crash about twenty minutes ago and I’m still trying to find my files. Just one of those days, I guess._

A series of disgruntled scientists trying to log into the haywire computer system. Doors that suddenly wouldn’t accept employee credentials. Machinery shorting out and coming undone, workers running to try and put the pieces back together on the expensive, absolutely necessary equipment. They picked that morning, _that_ morning specifically, to overwork the anti-mass spectrometer and put even more stress on the facility’s systems. Those people, his coworkers up in the control room. Dead on impact. Red mist. He could’ve been, too.

“Gordon.”

His eyes snapped up to meet hers.

“Are you getting all of this? Am I going too fast?”

The tendons in the backs of his hands flexed as he grasped the folder in his hand with a death grip. His heartbeat still filled his head. _Calm down, this isn’t Black Mesa. Focus._ “I-I’m sorry, you might need to repeat yourself.”

She lingered with a concerned, puzzled look before taking in a deep breath and coming back to the beginning of her explanation, suggesting he may want to start writing it down. He took her pen off the desk and flipped open the manila folder to find any scrap of paper he hadn’t completely covered in graphite and ink. He was not in Black Mesa anymore; that was long, long behind him. Today was a normal day.

\---

“Dammit!” Alyx hissed, slamming her open hand into the metal of the panel. Twenty minutes had turned into two hours. “Stupid thing!”

“Rough morning?”

Her attention turned from the _still_ broken electrical system down below. A familiar old face greeted her, and she sighed. “Barney. You have no idea.”

Shoving her tools back into her belt, she rolled off the side of the catwalk, catching the edge with her hands before dangling and then dropping a few feet to the ground. Barney watched with deep amusement as she lamented her struggle and remove her gloves. “This thing’s been giving me such a hard time. I don’t care _what_ it goes to, I’m ready to give up and let someone else handle it.”

“Wow. I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say ‘I’m ready to give up’ before.”

“You wouldn’t last ten minutes up there on your back,” she laughed. 

He shrugged with a typical grin. “I’ll admit that much.”

“So what brings you by?”

“Just wanted to drop in for a sec. I gotta tell ya, all these technical difficulties today are givin’ me the creeps. Not too psyched up to use any elevators today.”

She immediately knew what he meant. Barney didn’t talk about Black Mesa. He didn’t even think about it, as far as she knew. The things that happened on that day were locked in a titanium vault deep, deep within his memory, and no one dared try to force it open. But once, a long time ago, he had let the door creak just a few inches and told his story. He was in an elevator when the Cascade happened. The two men who rode it with him died, and he remarked that by all means he should’ve gone with them—and for a minute, thought he had. Then, he woke up, and the nightmare didn’t stop. 

So Barney had a complicated relationship with elevators. 

“This isn’t Black Mesa, Barn.” Her bare hand latched onto his shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. “You know this isn’t the first time we’ve had something like this happen. Our machines aren’t exactly stable.”

“Still gives me the heebie-jeebies.”

“I know.”

His larger, scarred hand reached over her own. It was a rare occasion when neither of them donned gloves; Alyx felt naked without hers on most occasions, and it seemed Barney felt the same about his old worn, black Metrocop pair. Neither of their hands were exactly soft, either, calloused and cracked from years of steadily working them until they bled. The fact that everyone still had all ten digits was something to be celebrated. 

“You wanna grab some lunch? I dunno about you, but I need a break.”

“Would I ever.” The chunky brown toolbelt around her hips clicked under pressure from her hands and slid off to be set down on a nearby table, replaced with the usual black holster she carried. With the weight of her equipment now released from her body, she was ready to take a break. Her gung-ho attitude about the tasks of the morning had quickly faded, and she had two new objectives on her mind: eat with Barney, considering she had skipped breakfast to run down here, and then go see Gordon. 

“Race ya to the dorm lift,” Barney said, eyebrow raised.

“What are you, ten?” A pause. Lightning crackled between the two of them, and then Alyx sprinted forward out the door, leaving the old guard in the dust. 

“Hey! I never said ‘go!’”

He burst out behind her and she heard his wheezing laughter as she tried her best to further the distance between them. She was about to find out just how quickly she could input the codes for the airlock doors. Down the hall, boots squeaking around a sharp corner, her letting out a half-giggled apology after she almost made impact with a poor rebel carrying a thermos of hot tea. From the sound of clanking and then bickering a few seconds later, it seemed like Barney’s reflexes weren’t so forgiving. A perfect window to punch in the key to the first door. 

_Beep-beep-beep-beep. Boop!_ She was winning. This was just too easy. 

“Vance!” _Oh, shit, he made it past Lawrence._ “This ain’t over til it’s over!”

“Then you better run faster!” she shouted in reply, breezing past the now open metal door into the next corridor. 

Slick footsteps on concrete bounced off the walls, two idiots skidding around people and things, bobbing and weaving to their destination. Many near misses followed them on the race to the dormitory lift, and when they rounded the last corner, it was a dead tie. Their eyes locked briefly, glaring at each other in determination. A grin overtook Alyx’s face as she found another ounce of energy to push herself further. Her foot hit the grate of the elevator’s floor just a moment before Barney’s. _”Ha!_ Take that, old man!”

“I… let you win…” he puffed, putting his weight against the railing. 

“Uh-huh.”

Both of them struggled to catch their breaths as they laughed at each other on the ride down. Alyx’s had done a lot of growing up in the past few years; as circumstances became increasingly dire, there wasn’t a lot of room for the mistakes that came with immaturity. Except, somehow, Barney had managed not only to continue to nurse his immature side, but also managed to drag her down with him at a second’s notice. It was nothing short of a talent of his, one that he exercised at every opportunity. 

“Admit it,” Alyx teased, “you lost because your old ankles sound like a gravel road.”

“Can’t argue with that. Jesus, where’s arthritis meds when ya need ‘em?”

She crossed her arms and laughed. “You sound ancient.”

“Forty-three is the new hundred-three in this day ‘n’ age, sweetheart.”

All she could seem to do in response was roll her eyes and lean backwards to sit against the rails as the lift continued on its slow journey downward. He continued to grip the metal bars with both hands. Silence dropped on the two of them like a cinder block, only mechanical groaning and clicking beneath their feet.

“Barney.” Her voice was drastically more serious. “The elevator isn’t going to fail. It’s almost there.”

No response. A tighter squeeze, his knuckles pressing through his skin. 

“I shoulda taken the stairs today.”

“Don’t talk like that. Today is just a normal day.”

The lift locked into place as it reached the end of its line. The gates opened; Barney quickly stepped off onto static ground. “I know I’m bein’ paranoid, Alyx,” he sighed. “Just let me be, alright?”

He looked back at her and stared for a second, a defensive front falling to reveal the typical sarcastic amusement he carried. “Race ya to the—”

“No rematches!”

“...Fine.”

\---

Gordon never absorbed the explanation that Judith had tried twice to give him about the teleporter. The second, long-winded, crucially detailed elucidation managed to have one word settle with him for every ten that did not, and it left him not only just as puzzled as before their conversation, but significantly embarrassed for wasting her time while his mind occupied another space entirely. He nodded, he scribbled down gibberish, threw in a few ‘ah, I see’s and ‘mhmm’s to make it seem as though he was listening, though the only thing that he could focus on was the weight of impending doom that seemed to be looming over his head, lowering ever closer to crushing him like a steel plate of a trash compactor. The precise moment that she was done speaking he excused himself as gracefully as he could, thanking her for the information he knew he would never actually be able to recall, and promptly turned heel and nearly ran from the tiny office into the bright artificial light of the concrete hall. He needed the room from yesterday—the one in which he spilled the coffee after more or less passing out over his work materials. He needed to work alone for a while.

The old table and flimsy folding chair waited there for him to arrive just as he’d left them before. Door clicked shut behind him, he dropped the files on the tabletop and slid into the chair to put his head in his hands. He ripped off his glasses and they clinked onto the surface of the wood, his fingers pressing deep into the corners of his eyes. He just needed a minute. He was okay.

“I’m okay. I’m okay,” he shuddered into his palms. Hot breaths moistened his skin, first quick and shallow, catching in his chest. With effort they began to regulate, deeper, slower, deliberate. There was no threat here. _Quit tensing your shoulders, sit up, put your glasses back on; everything is okay._

_This is not a Resonance Cascade day._

Somewhere, a radio chirped. _“Stabilization team holding in position.”_

Alyx laughed through a mouthful of sandwich in the cafeteria. 

_“Prepare to move in.”_

Gordon sighed and slid the folder closer to him, flipping it open to begin his daily routine. 

_“Copy. Moving team.”_

At the silo, boots shuffled. Belts and clips jangled together with each footstep of the masked soldiers marching toward the stronghold. 

No one else was outside. A well-placed explosive sent the sealed doors bursting off the hinges. Breach. Shouted orders compressed through radios were heard by rebels first, immediately followed by the opening of fire. Several people were gunned down before they had a chance to even think to reach for their weapons. 

The alarms never went off.

“Combine!” a man screamed as he tore through an open chain link gate, clambering then through a metal door in an attempt to escape. He barely had time to punch the code into the keypad with his shaky hands before he, too, became a victim to this massacre. His blood stained the bottom of combat boots as they stepped over him into the newly-unlocked corridor. 

Gordon’s eyes flicked upwards to look towards the ceiling. He could hear a muted sound coming from a story or two above. Gunshots. He would never forget the sound. 

Jolting upwards, he nearly lost his balance completely. His hands slammed against the table to save himself from falling. Papers flew in his wake as his lab coat picked up the wind behind him like a cape—he was out the door before he could even process the mess he’d made.

“Gordon!” Judith stepping out from her office. “What’s happened? If there’s an invasion of any kind the perimeter alarms should’ve—“

They both stopped. “Oh my god. The system is down.”

His pace picked back up, zero-to-sixty. He needed to get up there. He needed to help. Almost all of the White Forest base of operations was fitted with elevators as a primary transportation vessel from one level to another. A good thing for the handicapped, or simply people who didn’t get their kicks from lugging themselves up and down a dozen flights of stairs every day, perhaps, but the lifts dating back to the Soviet era were not good for time. There was an emergency stairwell located near the elevator, if he just took them up he could get to her. He could fight. 

“Wait! _Gordon!”_ Isaac stood from his chair. “You cannot go up there without your HEV suit! It’s far too— What are you doing?”

There simply was no time to get in the suit. Far too long to get the pieces together, even longer for its systems to come online. Putting on the HEV suit for his own safety meant potentially sacrificing other lives. He knew how eager the rebels were to jump into battle. Too many had died before his eyes. Not today. Isaac’s shotgun, mounted on the wall, was quickly removed by trembling hands and stolen away, despite protests from the owner. 

“Good grief, you’re going to get yourself killed, Dr. Freeman! Please!”

Gordon looked back. There was deep-rooted fear in the hazel eyes of his old mentor, to a degree so chilling he couldn’t stand to keep his gaze. He looked down at the floor. _Alyx could be up there. Barney could be up there. I can’t stay._

The words couldn’t come through. 

One last glance to Isaac and Judith before he turned heel and ran for the stairs. 

Alyx looked toward Radael’s Vortigaunt abilities for answers. “What the hell is happening up there?” 

“It appears that the Combine have infiltrated the Resistance.”

 _“Combine?”_ Her head whipped around to look at Barney. “How? I thought there barely any in the area anymore!”

“I… I guess…” He trailed off, shaking his head. 

Both of them, along with the rest of the people in the cafeteria with them, rose from the tables and ran. Alyx drew her gun from her belt. “I cannot believe this is happening.”

“I shoulda taken the stairs.”

The sound of a volley of continuous gunfire became closer and sharper as Gordon neared the stairwell door. At the right time, he could shove it open and ambush. It sounded like there were about half a dozen Combine in this hall, if he timed it right he would easily be able to overtake them and find a team. 

Rustling. A soldier was approaching, mumbling a comment into its radio in the same voice every other one of its colleagues did. It eased him slightly to call them ‘it.’ They certainly weren’t people anymore. 

The figure approached, Gordon peering through the small window. If it got close enough, maybe he could just…

_BAM._

Metal on metal, the door against the soldier’s mask, and it was stunned for a precious moment. He took his chance to leap from behind the door and put a bullet between its haunting, glowing blue eyes. Its body fell. One down, and he was still alive to dart to the side under cover of a shelf before the other soldiers could get a shot in. The other five turned at the deafening sound of the shot, and two were taken care of almost immediately. He didn’t have any extra bullets, so he prayed that the last three in the gun would last him long enough to pass this group and find more ammunition. The remaining three soldiers were approaching at an alarming pace. 

He popped out from behind the shelf, firing to cover himself in his attempt to regain shelter behind a crate close by. In the most graceful swoop he could manage, he grabbed the machine gun off of the first soldier he killed and swapped it with the shotgun. Dammit, he missed the weapon-holding capabilities of the HEV suit. One gun at a time just wouldn’t do. 

A shot narrowly missed his head, whizzing by with a remarkable noise, and he shuddered once he had crouched down behind the wooden box. After a second of hiding to draw them closer, he stood back up and returned their fire, this time their own bullets. The spray of semi-automatic fire knocked them all down fairly quickly. Safety for now, though there was no telling how long that would last. 

Alyx had never run faster up a flight of stairs in her life. They were shallow and tall, difficult for her to keep her footing—so much so that she pondered to herself whether or not the Soviet Union had their own version of OSHA. She and Barney tripped and stumbled up the cobbled steps to the ground level, charged through the door, and she immediately opened fire. Barney, having leaned a little _too_ far into the post-war lifestyle of not having to carry a gun all the time (especially too far for a former security guard), rushed out of the line of fire to find anything he could fight with. 

Bodies of unprepared rebels lay everywhere. This was slaughter. 

“You think you can get away with this?!” she screamed at a soldier just before shooting it in the neck. It sputtered its digitized Combine moan and crumpled. Her brown boot dug into its skull—for good measure. No mercy, no sympathy. If there was absolutely any reason left in the universe for Alyx to believe that the soldiers of the Combine were redeemable, today had turned that hope to ash. Overwatch had no way to reach them to give orders now that the portal was long closed. They had organized this on their own volition, out of pure malice towards the Resistance and the team that destroyed the Borealis.

_Gordon._

Where was he? Was he still in the silo with the other scientists? God, did he even have the suit? “Barney! We need to find Gordon!”

No answer. _Shit._ “Barney?”

“I’m alright,” he called from another room. She made a break for the open corridor and sprinted toward the hall from which Barney’s voice came. He was in a small supply room crouched down behind a row of shelves. A young rebel lay beside him, barely conscious. “This woman is injured. I need to stay here.”

She nodded. “Be careful.”

“Right back atcha,” replied the old guard as Alyx exited the room again, her next course of action being finding the source of the breach. The stairs put her on the opposite side of the wing than the elevator would have—another bizarre feature of this old Russian architecture—and she was certain that the silo entrance was the only place she knew of that they could’ve possibly breached. No one outside of the Resistance knew of the other gates. 

Expecting to see a set of deadbolted metal doors ahead of her, horror struck her in the chest when she locked eyes with the end of the hall, each of the doors wide open. A dead, trampled rebel's body was cast aside by the last of them. “Dear God,” she began to whisper, nearly immediately cut off from her shock by the clicking of a machine gun off to the side of the room. Alyx bolted for cover, crouching down onto one knee behind a barrel near one of the chain-link fences that separated the foyer-type room into sections. Her skin ached where her bandage squeezed her arm. 

A soldier came around the corner with its gun drawn and was quickly subdued by the lightning-fast bullets that came from Alyx’s pistol. After a turn of her head to glance backward, she saw a handful of rebels hidden in the same corridor, huddled behind a stack of supply boxes. More Combine approached through the wide-open doors. She made a “come here” motion with her hand and nodded to them as if to say, “Don’t worry, I’ve got you,” before stepping forth behind her cover and opening fire once again. The rebels cocked their guns and joined her.

Bullets were exchanged, and the small team was thankfully left unscathed after the room went quiet. “Go close that door!” Alyx ordered a man. “Block it with whatever you can. We have to stop more from getting in.”

She noted his “Yes, ma’am,” and bolted for the door from which she emerged, the one where still lay a dead refugee of White Forest. This was needless, cold-blooded murder. She would get her revenge.

Gordon’s clothing was a liability at best. There was nothing protective about his white coat, thin and torn from the years it most likely sat in a box, buried. The back only served to flow behind him and get caught on everything, or to possibly be grabbed by a soldier. One of the very first things he did under stable cover was rip it right off. That was certainly better, though he felt much more naked without it on. Not that he could’ve possibly felt any more exposed being in the heat of close combat without the power armor he usually donned in these situations. He was painfully aware of how _vulnerable_ he was right now.

Dipped into an old storage closet, he found a small vial of green liquid to slide into his pocket just in case he came along anyone who could still be saved. He still had no clue what was inside of those canisters, and hadn’t thought much of it in a while; all he knew was he would’ve died about a thousand times over in Black Mesa if not for the strange syringes all of the scientists seemed to have on hand. A mystery for another time.

A few bullets for a revolver, a roll of gauze (thank god for pockets), and he was on his way. Time to find his friends.

He opened the wooden door ever so slowly, listening for the slightest creak. A single Combine soldier marched down the hall with its back turned. Clearly a no-brainer. Gordon lifted his stolen machine gun and easily popped a dozen shots into the back of its vest, without protest. _More rounds for me,_ humorously passed through his mind as he bent to pick up the dead soldier’s clip. All of a sudden, there were boot-steps behind him.

He turned around. Another soldier.

The gun went off, and he expected to hear the sound of it ricocheting off his armor.

Instead, he felt a blazing heat pierce through his abdomen. His legs gave out under him and he buckled to the floor with a guttural cry. 

Gordon’s ears rang so loudly he could barely make out his surroundings. Bright red filled his vision, blocking out any promise of escaping this dire moment; he was reduced to a pile of flesh and cloth on the floor, groping at his wound in a pitiful attempt to plug it, to stop the leaking of his blood which now covered most of him. He knew he was about to die.

_..ou get the f… ...way fro.. im…!_

Was that Alyx? It was definitely a woman, but the deafening tones that completely overtook his brain made it near impossible to tell who the voice belonged to. He felt a thud next to him. No one else could take down a soldier like that. Definitely Alyx.

_Gord..n… De..r God, s...y with me! ...rdon!_

Hands touched him, all over him, frantically, trying to assess the damage. Immediately, contact filled him with a pleasant warmth. Perhaps he was okay. Perhaps he could rest.

_No, d...t you dare cl… ..ur eyes! Gordon! G..rd…..._

_Somebody help me!_

The glaring red haze over his eyes rapidly began to gradient to crimson, and soon enough, it was black.


	13. Chapter 13

“Somebody _please_ help me!”

Alyx nearly choked on her own tears. She couldn’t cry right now, the only hope she had to come out of this was to keep a level head. The hot water trickling down her cheeks put a blurry film over her eyes; she blinked hard as she ran her shaking hands down his body trying to find the wound, still glancing upwards on her guard. Her fingers grazed his sleeve and then his own hand, and immediately she touched something hot and squishy. His hand fell out of the way. Gunshot wound. Torn fabric absolutely soaked with red. 

“Gordon,” she shuddered, “I need you to wake up. Come on, please. _Please.”_

No. This felt too familiar. This had to be a nightmare. Her mind’s sick way of taking everything she loved and twisting it around to remind her of who she had lost. Gordon’s blood soaking into her jeans as she kneeled next to him felt identical to the way Eli’s body had leaked both red and clear all over her when he was wrapped in her arms in the hangar. She was about to wake up next to Gordon. This was just a horrible dream. She shouldn’t have fallen back asleep. 

God damn it, why did the universe see it fit for Alyx to cradle everyone she loved as they died?

_”Gordon Freeman is DOWN! Do you HEAR ME?”_

When no answer came to her ragged screams the tears only seemed to come faster. She was alone, and it was time to take matters into her own hands, beginning with ripping the ace bandage off of her right arm to expose a deep scar to the open air. Hissing, she rolled the long strand of fabric into a ball and stuffed it into the wound, packing it tight. She allowed a smileless laugh. “Maybe it’s better that you’re not awake right now.”

Gordon was on his left side, curled into something that resembled the fetal position. As she went to straighten his legs and roll him carefully onto his back, she heard glass clink against the concrete. She paused, confused. Was there something in his pocket? Upon exploration into his right back pocket with her hand, she felt a tube and pulled it out before immediately exhaling a shaky sigh. “Oh, thank god you had this.”

The vial hissed open upon her force against one of the metal ends and she hastily poured it onto the wound. At the very least, it would help the pain, and keep him from getting any worse in the next minute or two. But if she didn’t somehow get him to a medic or a Vort soon, there wouldn’t be enough blood left in him for him to even remember what pain was. 

She cradled his face with utmost gentleness, silently pleading with him to wake up. He was resilient—one of the bravest, most unbreakable people she’d ever met, and without a doubt a great force to be reckoned with. That being said, this wasn’t the first time she had treated his wounds. Smart was a word she could use to describe Gordon; brilliant, even. But another was headstrong. Reckless. Much too willing to sacrifice himself for the good of those around him, whether it be one civilian or the universe. But he never thought he would be devil-may-care enough to run into a fight without the HEV suit, something he knew was the only reason he made it out of a lot of the predicaments he did.

If he had the audacity to die, she was going to kill him.

_“I need a medic!”_ yelled Alyx again between sobs, deciding to give it one last shot. If this didn’t work she was going to have to lug his lanky self up onto her shoulders, not exactly her best plan. 

The sound of heavy footsteps behind her sent the hairs on her neck standing straight up. _Clank, clank,_ approaching alarmingly fast, ready to strike. When she whipped her head around to catch a glimpse at the thing running towards her she fully expected to be greeted with a gun in her face, loaded and ready to put a fresh hole right in the middle. Instead, she saw a familiar man, covered in blood she only assumed wasn’t his, a usually pleasant face weighted down by terror. He looked like hell. He looked even more like hell when he gazed at the man on the ground. 

Shell shocked eyes immediately came out of their daze. This is real, she could see him discovering as if she was watching cogs turn in his mind. It had been a long time since she had seen that expression, that disbelief and horror and panic bubbling in the always-cool Barney, and she wished she wasn’t seeing it right now. If a situation was grim enough to wipe away his composure, it was time to get worrying. “Christ. Gordon,” he choked out. He knelt down next to the two of them and when Alyx’s eyes met his straight-on, she could tell he wasn’t all there. 

“Are- are you hurt?” As he asked this she realized there were still tears dribbling down her face. She was shaking horribly. 

“No,” she breathed, “Just him. Just him.”

“Okay, uh, we… we need to…” He began to crumble. “We need to get him to th-the infirmary. If we try to treat him here, he’s gonna…”

The end of the sentence didn’t need to be spoken. “I’ll grab his legs,” she responded, rising from the floor, gulping down the anxiety in her throat. Wordlessly, he nodded, still focused on the man on the ground, and crouched to slide his hands underneath Gordon’s limp shoulders. Both of them lifted with strained grunts and started to hobble as quickly as they could down the corridor, praying, begging that they were alone. No more Combine, please.

With her friend here by her side, the tears ceased, though her eyes burned with the threat of more. Her jaw tightened from the effort of holding them back. “I can’t lose him, Barney.” His pale eyes glistened under a passing light, gazing at her sorrowfully as he walked backwards, Gordon in tow. He knew. By the lack of color in his face she could tell he couldn’t bare to, either.

Twenty years of not knowing whether your friend was alive or dead, of constantly hearing his name lifted up by Eli and rebels as a savior—nowhere to be found. Twenty years. This handful of minutes had twisted her insides into knots and the mere idea of waiting twenty years to find out whether or not someone she loved was okay could’ve sent her into shambles. She tried her hardest not to let it.

A sound. They both stopped. Alyx’s wide, focused eyes darted to Barney as a warning before she slowly let down Gordon’s legs and unholstered her pistol. She sensed danger hiding around the corner, quickly confirmed by the chirp of a radio. “Take him,” she whispered. “Get him out of here. I’ll follow you.”

“Alyx—”

“I said _go!”_

That attracted attention. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Barney carefully scoop Gordon into his arms; she caught his struggle to maintain the weight just barely before she turned and her eyes flicked over to the soldier just coming around to pay her a visit. Three shots through its mask, surprisingly fragile, and it dropped, its gun rattling against the concrete as it fell. That might just do.

Her small gun clicked back into its place on her belt at the same time her other arm swung around with the Combine rifle to fall into form. She ran to catch up with Barney, who was hobbling along at a sort of speedwalking pace. “Christ, he’s heavier than he looks,” he remarked, straining.

“Do you need help?”

“Nah, I got ‘im.” He shifted Gordon’s weight a bit in his arms. If Alyx had been able to catch a good enough look at his face, she might’ve seen the slightest bit of moisture bubbling up at the corners of his eyes. It was not lost on her, however, the next time he spoke, wavering so slightly as he looked down at the man whom he carried. “All that education and they never told you not to run into battle, huh?”

That crack in his voice, the small breaking of his composure, was enough to send Alyx into freefall again. She suppressed a sob as she dialed in the code for the next door blocking their path and fumbled the first time; the lock let out a harsh blare to let her know she’d done wrong, and the tears flowed harder through her second attempt. Barney’s devastated eyes bore into her neck like a laser. The heat of being watched as her shaking fingers pressed into the keypad buttons was unbearable. 

“Alyx…” he said softly, an offering of sympathy.

“Don’t. Please,” she choked out in reply. “Don’t say anything.”

“...Okay. Let’s go.”

\---

Barney had never seen her like this, and it fucking terrified him.

He wasn’t there when Eli died, something he regretted so horribly—against all better judgement he told himself maybe if he was there instead of on a stupid train to nowhere, maybe there was a chance he could’ve done something—and he knew nothing of the blinding emotions she must’ve felt on those days. It took him too long to get back, and once he did, she and Gordon were long gone. He was one of the last people to hear the news.

Alyx watched her father get murdered, and he wasn’t there for her. He didn’t see it. He had no idea. And now, he was carrying his old buddy, one of his dearest friends, someone who had extended him the most kindness he’d ever been given, and the girl walking in front of him was at her weakest and her strongest all at once. The only thing he could do was try to walk faster, he supposed.

Down this corridor, through one last door, then the elevator, and they’d be in the clear. Fear threatened to clamp his throat shut but he gulped it down; now was not the time. There was too much at stake right now, too many things that were riding on the assumption that he would get his pansy ass on the lift and not have a panic attack. He was thinking it, he _knew_ Alyx had to be thinking it. Anxiety was not an option. The man in his arms was about to bleed out.

That was when he realized he was soaking wet with fresh, warm blood, and glanced back to see a trail of droplets seeping into the floor below. “Do we have blood? We have blood, right? They’ve got a-a reserve of it, don’t they?” His voice was slowly rising in speed and tone. _Calm down. Not now._

“I think so. Yeah, yeah, we do. I donated a few months ago.” Alyx was barely gripping onto equanimity as tears dripped down her face and her body shuddered with half-contained bawls. She was trying her best to be a good lookout, though the gun clattered gently with the heavy shaking of her arms. Watching this poor girl behave in this manner when he was so used to her taking everything in stride stabbed at his chest almost as much as the reason why she had broken down.

Through that last door, a pause to check for Combine nearby. Coast clear. The two of them practically flew to the elevator, Barney fumbling as quickly as he possibly could with a hundred-sixty some-odd pounds of dead weight—no, he hated that phrase—in his arms. Alyx hit the lift’s grate a few seconds before he did. Suddenly, she turned to face him, and he got the full picture of just how beaten down she was. She concreted her voice and let her grip on the gun go from two hands to only one; it fell to her hip and her free hand caressed Gordon’s auburn hair. “Gordon. You just have to hold on a little longer. We’re almost there.”

He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t. His teeth sunk hard into his bottom lip and he lifted his head towards the ceiling, screwing up his eyes as hot tears began to pour over and down his bloodstained cheeks. “I’m sorry,” he breathed. “I’m sorry, Alyx, I’m sorry.”

A small hand came up to squeeze his shoulder firmly. He couldn’t bare to open his eyes to see the shadows on her face that he was certain were there to haunt him. _Dammit, Gordon. You idiot. I always told you that you were gonna get yourself killed somehow, you didn’t have to go and prove me right. I thought it was gonna be your stupid energy drinks._

A vision. A man with a perfectly-trimmed beard and a ponytail sat at a lunch table, nursing a can of Mello Yello. _Do you know how much caffeine is in those things?_ the plucky security guard asked. Without fail, the answer to that question was always _Not enough,_ followed by a hearty chug. This was a memory that he usually remembered exclusively fondly, something that always made him laugh. This time it only made the pathetic crying harder to contain.

_Ka-chink._

The sound of medics faded in. They were not the first people to come to this floor of the bunker with someone to be treated, though he begged whatever god was out there that they would be the last. People shouting orders and moving about in an uproar wasn’t enough to drown out the gunshots heard above—every time he heard the sound of a Combine weapon he had to convince himself it was a rebel wielding some hand-me-downs.

He opened his eyes. Go time. “Someone help us!” he shouted, his booming voice commanding the attention of everyone around him. “It’s Gordon Freeman!”

“Here, here, put him here,” a male medic stressed as he rushed to drag a gurney to where Barney and Alyx stood. It looked like it could crack under his weight, but no other options lay in front of him, so he obliged, ever-so-gently setting him down on the thin mattress.

Alyx piped up. Her voice was surprisingly clear; she had forced herself into business mode. “He’s been shot in the left side of his abdomen.”

“Okay,” he decided after a few moments of looking him over, exploring the area around the wound by unbuttoning his shirt. “He needs surgery immediately. I’ll take him back.”

“Oh, god,” Alyx whimpered, breaking another piece off of Barney’s heart. The male medic summoned two more, another male and a female, and they raced the gurney down a hallway and quickly swerved around a corner.

“Hey, hey! Be careful with him!”

Barney took a few storming steps forward before his forearm was grasped tightly to stop him. When he turned around to face her, she looked as if she was about to crumple like paper. The assault rifle slipped out of her grasp and slid down her leg to the floor, and she shattered into sobs again. “I can’t lose him. I can’t. Please, I can’t lose another person…”

His arms were already around her before he processed what was happening. Her fingers dug into the back of his soaked shirt as she pressed her face into his chest, and he could feel every one of her deep bawls vibrate off of his ribs. To call this a nightmare would be a horrific understatement. If the two greatest faces of the Resistance died months apart at the hands of the Combine, the very symbol of hope that they had built would smash to microscopic pieces like tempered glass.


	14. Chapter 14

Alyx rose from one of the two folding chairs that sat next to Gordon’s bedside. He was okay, he was _alive,_ and almost all of the news that the surgical team had given them seemed good. “Not out of the woods yet,” was a phrase one of them had used, however—the bullet had missed all of the critical things, thank God, but he was at high risk for infection due to his intestine being opened. What was it they said—they had to… right, they resected part of his bowel. The terms were too much to absorb. All she knew was he was okay, but not really. Alive, now unconscious but soon awake, most likely on twice as much morphine as the HEV suit ever administered, and “not out of the woods yet.”

“I can’t be here right now.”

“That’s alright,” Barney reassured. His hand, crusted with the dark brown of dried blood, rested on Gordon’s now bare arm. “They could probably use you upstairs.”

Status updates had been coming in painfully sparsely over the past few hours. It seemed that the Combine force that had pushed into the base had been neutralized, but the cost was high. At least thirty of their own were dead. Alyx’s blood boiled at the thought; thirty brave men and women who only barely tasted their victory over oppression, cut down before even being able to truly revel in their new world and its possibilities. As frantic as it was in the sick bay (even with the privilege of a closed room the occupants could still hear the frenzy of doctors and medics yelling orders to one another and carting around critical patients), she could only imagine the chaos that unfolded above their heads. Barney was definitely right, they needed her.

Gordon’s stubble pricked her hand upon her touching him. “Please, stay. I don’t want him to be alone.” Barney nodded in response.

Briefly, she caught a look at her friend in the chair opposite of the one she’d just stood from. Neither of them had done anything to cleanse themselves of the horrors upstairs, clothing and skin still soaked crimson. Before she left, she looked back at him again. Not all of the blood he wore was Gordon’s.

“That woman in the supply room,” she remembered. “Did she make it?”

His eyes averted hers almost instantaneously, falling back down to Gordon. That said enough.

“I’m sorry, Barney.”

With that last word she pulled the handle to the old wooden door and left the room grimacing. The hallway leading to the main patient intake room, a makeshift emergency room of sorts, was full of people on gurneys and medical staff swarming around them like nervous honeybees. It took a good deal of weaving to return to the entrance of the floor where she could board the elevator—though she immediately thought better of it, opting to climb the stairs. Just a glimpse of that elevator suffocated her.

As she ascended the first flight of stairs and the noise from below her waned from earshot, a pit grew at her core. Dr. Kleiner’s steady voice gave orders in its theatrical way, shepherding people in different directions where attention was needed. Her father’s shoes fit him well, she realized, regardless of if he cared to wear them.

She opened the door to the stairwell and marched down the hall to see him standing in the middle of the establishment’s entrance, in view of the doors destroyed by the raiding party. _“Kleiner.”_ Her legs pushed her into a run and he whirled around to note her presence; the two only needed a split-second of reaction time to prepare for impact in the form of a relieved hug.

“Alyx! Oh, you poor thing,” he fretted, pulling her in closer to squeeze her for a moment. When he stepped back he found a place for his hands firmly on each of her arms. “Are you alright, dear? How is he?”

The paternal concern shining from under his glasses was almost palpable, enough to form a spear through her. She was barely taken aback to learn that word about Gordon’s condition had made its rounds in her absence. “I-I’m okay. He’s out of surgery. Not awake yet but stable.”

“Thank goodness,” sighed Isaac, softening his grip. “When he regains consciousness I hope you’ll inform him of how much he _terrified all of us.”_

Terrified didn’t begin to describe the gut wrenching dread eating her alive. Terrified did not cover the man by Gordon’s bedside, weary and bloodsoaked. The English language didn’t have a word with enough of a slashing connotation to fully encompass the thickness of the air and the difficulty she found in trying to heave it into her lungs, all while gravity felt as though its force was doubling every second, doing everything in its power to bring her down to the floor and keep her there. She _just_ said goodbye to her dad. As sure as he was, she never bought into that whole God idea—but right now she could absolutely picture a universal force, cruel and sadistic, laughing in her face as it brings every event it can to crack the strength she worked twenty-four years to build.

“Uncle Izzy,” Alyx’s voice broke with a high whine caught somewhere in her throat. She hadn’t called him that in eons. It made her feel two feet tall, still wearing sneakers and sitting on her father’s lap as he talked shop using words she wouldn’t know how to pronounce for another few years. Dr. Kleiner was a man she admired and respected profoundly due to a list of reasons ten miles long, but ultimately was her elder and her supervisor; Uncle Izzy was like a second father. His eyes sharpened with surprise the moment the name left her mouth. “Why does everyone I love die on me?”

“Now, now, my darling,” he comforted as she began to cry again, to her immense humiliation. “That’s no way to think about this. Gordon is extremely resilient, and I have no doubt that he will make a full recovery.”

Alyx closed her eyes and lowered her head to rest on his shoulder while he silently shooed away onlookers with his hand and a mouthed _”Go on!”_ Then followed a precise pause, which he typically held as he gathered his thoughts which she was well aware zoomed around in his head at a mile a minute. “The last few months have been a whirlwind of events, I won’t lie. My goodness, we almost lost you the same day as your father. And shortly after I was left unsure if you would return from the Borealis in one piece.” She felt a gentle pair of hands trying to lift her tear-soaked face from his shoulder and obliged; his own face was grim. “You cannot allow fear to turn you into a pessimist. The fact that you’ve managed to be such a happy child in this environment is incredible, and that must be protected at all costs.”

“I can’t lose anyone else,” murmured Alyx. 

“The world grows safer every day, my dear. Today has been a horror which we will never forget. But we also killed many of the last remaining Combine soldiers, and that is a silver lining to which we absolutely have to cling to keep our sanity.”

A couple of tears dripped off of her jaw and one of his weathered hands, thumb first, rose to wipe her cheek. “...When did you get all wise on me?” she chuckled slightly, sniffing. 

He laughed in response. “It’s called being old.”

This sent her into a heartier, sweet fit of giggles that reminded her so much of childhood. She finished the job of smearing the water off of her face and sighed. “Thank you. I’m just really not myself today.”

“You know I’m always here,” he beamed. 

“...Uh, the reason why I came up here, actually,” _sniff,_ “was I wanted to know if I could help. I-I… being down there in the sick bay, it’s… horrible. I can’t breathe down there.”

“Of course, yes. I understand. Let me think…” Isaac assembled one of his typical poses of quandary—an arm folded in front of him with the other elbow rested on top, hand on his chin—and went quiet for a moment of contemplation. “You could assist in bringing the system back up. I’m not quite sure how much progress they’ve made on that task but I can imagine it will have to take more time than has already elapsed.”

Alyx nodded. “I’d be happy to.”

A kind-eyed smile warmed her as he gave her a parting nod and shoulder squeeze. Determined to get moving, she turned, but was quickly stopped by the sound of her name.

“Wait, Alyx. Um…” That was weird, he didn’t usually say ‘um.’ “If it’s not too much trouble, or perhaps too embarrassing for you… Well, I did really miss that nickname.”

Her face lit up with a beaming, sentimental smile. “You should’ve said something a long time ago, Uncle Izzy,” she hummed, and he visibly flushed from joy. 

Somehow, she exited the area of the base smiling softly, though her eyes filled back to the brim with worry for the man floors below in a hospital bed. 

\---

“Man, the sedatives they use these days must be strong.” 

An ancient flip clock sat a small table in the very corner of the quaint room, briefly filling it with its ticking each minute that passed. Gordon was still out cold, and his companion was determined to fulfill his promise of having his butt parked right next to him until he awoke. 

“I know you’re not in a coma or anything so talking to you doesn’t make a lot of sense. But I gotta be honest here, Gordon, you’re not very entertaining to watch sleep. I’m thinkin’ maybe if I talk to myself the grating sound of my voice will wake you up.”

He laughed quietly, slightly shaking his head. What was he doing?

“This kinda reminds me of when I got my wisdom teeth out. I bet you remember that. Old Doctor What’s-His-Face, oh, what was it… Dr. Wright? Yeah, think so. That old bastard made me look like a damn chipmunk with all the swelling in my cheeks!” He began to chuckle over his words. “I barely remember wobbling through the halls tripping my ass off on hydrocodone. I can’t believe they let me work while I was recovering. Probably illegal, now that I think about it.”

Gordon’s vital monitor beeped along at its usual pace. Steady as ever. Hadn’t changed a bit, which Barney only assumed was good. 

“You better enjoy your little nap while you can, ‘cause there are a whole lot of people who are gonna be mad at you when you wake up. Myself included, heh.” 

He glanced down at his clothes, still dark and sticky with crusted blood. His hand reached into the bed to squeeze Gordon’s arm. 

“Don’t ever make me do this again.”

\---

Another handful of hours went by, with repeated reassurance from various members of the medical team that ‘this is completely normal.’ His body was under a great deal of stress, one medic explained, and it was no surprise that, with or without the sedatives, he was still resting soundly. This sparked many jokes and old stories from Barney of him oversleeping and getting chewed out when experiments had to be delayed, or when one of the old coots had to go into the chamber himself instead of leaving it to the youngster.

“D’you know how many times I swore he was about to be fired because he slept right through his alarm?” the old security guard chortled. “He doesn’t sleep, he hibernates.”

“Doesn’t surprise me. I was late today because of him,” Alyx chimed in, elbow resting on the side of the bed with her head propped on her hand. She had been running around for at least two hours up above, taking orders and doing what needed to be done, before Reese had seen her stained clothes and her bloodshot eyes and demanded that she go back downstairs, or at the very least get a shower. It felt wrong, though, to shed the layer of grime and blood. People died. Dozens. It was the first time in months that they’d seen such calamity at White Forest, and the idea that Alyx could get up and simply wash away the painting of battle on her skin and clothing felt so inappropriate, so uncomfortable, like a spit in the face of everyone who had lost their life because she couldn’t get working what she had found out was the perimeter alarm system. She couldn’t cleanse herself before the day was over, it would be wrong. Judging by Barney’s complete lack of separation from his chair and the fact that he still wore that same flannel shirt, those same denim jeans, he probably echoed her sentiment. 

So they waited. If either of them had been able to tune their senses long enough to look inward, both would find themselves prepared to drop from hunger—neither of them had taken more than three bites of their lunches before the gunshots rang out above them, and even if they’d finished, it had been so long since that it didn’t matter. The sun sat low on the horizon now. An entire day gone by, and they sat here.

The very first thing Gordon noticed was an absolutely killer pain in his left side, like a dagger piercing his core. The second he noticed was the burning discomfort of a tube that seemed to reach from his nose downward through his body. He moaned slightly, crinkling his eyes further shut, and immediately heard the sound of metal scraping against the floor. “Gordon?”

Alyx. His eyes flew open, immediately met with blasting light from the bulb that hung in the middle of the room, and closed one eye again to try and cast some of it away. She floated over him at the side of his bed and reached a hand to cradle his face, which he instantly took in both of his own and clutched like his life depended on his grip. She smiled as he leaned into her palm.

“I was so worried,” she breathed.

“Worried is an understatement, I think.” Gordon’s head tilted to the left to gaze at Barney, now standing with his hands gruffly on his hips. “You scared the everlovin’ hell out of all of us.”

_I’m sorry,_ he tried so hard to get out, but the effort was too much.

Alyx continued to hold his head in her hand, stroking his cheek with her thumb. “Do you remember what happened?” He hesitated, eyes quickly diverting, then nodded. Combine boots, belt jangling against a transhuman hip, then a shout and a shotgun bang. Clear as day.

“Gordon, it’s okay.” She must’ve understood his silence. “You’re going to be fine, they just want to watch you for a little while.”

“Is… is that my blood?”

The two figures looked at each other, wide-eyed, from their respective sides of the bed. “Uh,” Barney spoke up first, “y-yeah. Most of it is.”

His grip on Alyx’s hand tightened. “Oh.”

“...Barney carried you bridal-style down here.” She smiled awkwardly, as if she was trying to lighten the mood and distract him.

“Oh, really?” Gordon rasped. “So that’s why you look like shit.”

The three of them burst into laughter, with the bedridden man beginning to and then stopping with a quiet wheeze and carefully touching around the bandage on his stomach. 

“Are you in pain? I can get a medic to give you some more meds—”

“God, no,” he interrupted, laughing quietly at her. “I am so sick of morphine. Get me some… some acetaminophen or something.”

Barney grinned. “I think we can manage that. Be right back.”

The door opened to let in some of the sound from the hall, now considerably less hectic, and then closed again to shut the room out from the rest of the infirmary. Alyx pulled her chair closer to the bed and sat with her hand clasped around his own.

“Why did the HEV suit have a compartment for morphine in the first place? Until the Resonance Cascade happened, the only thing we ever needed it for was radiation protection. Whose idea was that?”

Alyx laughed and smoothed out a portion of the blanket with her flattened fingers. “I have no idea.”

“Do you know how hard it is to aim a gun when you’re on morphine?” She laughed again, heartier this time, and shook her head. “It’s near impossible. I couldn’t even figure out what I was pointing at sometimes.”

“Are you sure it’s all worn off?” she teased, and both of them chuckled.

He sighed and threw his head back onto his pillow to gaze at the ceiling. “Gordon Freeman, vanquisher of the Combine, was buzzed on opiates the entire time.”

“And everyone else was none the wiser.”

“Even you?”

She snorted. “Uh, no. I wore that thing a few times, Gordon.”

The two chatted about drugs and many other facets of the HEV suit before Barney returned with a medic, who expressed her deep excitement to see him awake and explained all of the things previously told to his companions. The tube in his nose was because they had to remove a couple of inches of his intestine, which meant no eating for a few days, to his generous disappointment. They wanted to keep him for a while to monitor him and give him the best odds for not developing an infection, a word that scared him quite a bit until he remembered how medical technology had evolved even in the bleak world under Combine rule. The short of all of it was basically this: the next week or two would absolutely suck, and then he’d be alright.

After the medic administered some intravenous pain medication that _wasn’t_ morphine and went on her way to check on other patients, Alyx and Barney sat back in their chairs and took the difficult step of letting him know what exactly had happened, and how many people they had lost. Thirty-four was the death toll that would hopefully halt its slow rise now that the day was coming to an end; most of them died immediately or almost immediately, but a few outliers managed to reach a hospital bed before succumbing to their injuries. Two remained critical, though with a cautiously optimistic team watching over them. He could’ve been one of them. His idiotic jump into the deep end without a float saved no one, only distracted the people working hard to keep others alive.

“Gordon?” Alyx prodded gently. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“It wasn’t yours either, Alyx.” Barney glared in her direction.

“We’re not talking about me.”

Gordon scowled. “Are we going to call it no one’s fault that thirty-four people are dead?”

That question consumed all the noise in the room. The clock ticked anxiously as it awaited the answer.

“Everyone’s and no one’s,” she eventually decided. “It was… a horrible mistake.”

He continued to look blankly at the gray ceiling and retained his silence. Barney shifted uncomfortably in his chair; Alyx simply stayed put. She decided to speak again. “I thought the days of this happening were over, but… I was wrong, I guess.”

Without looking down to see where he was reaching, Gordon extended both arms beside him, hands outstretched and beckoning each of the people in the room to take one in their own hand. The two of them did, and he squeezed with as much pressure as he could muster in his condition. He was alive. Many weren’t, which made him ache from stem to stern, but he was, and so were some of the most important people in his life. Alyx and Barney sat at his side and waited for him—hell, they dragged him here. Alyx was the first to find him when he went down. Barney picked him up and carried him across the facility to where he lay now. They loved him. Despite everything, despite twenty years and gravity dragging down his face and scars and bruises and near-death experiences, Barney still laughed about soda machines and security shifts. He still had that mischievous twinkle in his eye when he talked about the time he caught Gordon watching a documentary in the pitch dark and nearly scared the life out of him by making himself known in the entryway of the break room. And Alyx, Alyx loved him regardless of so much, too—twisted ankles, tears shed in the snow, death and being reborn into life, the light of breathtaking vortal power weaving a needle of psychic energy through two souls to sew them together as one thing, first half dependent on the second and vice-versa.

He could easily argue that luck was never on his side, that it was absolutely befitting to him to be the man stuck at ground zero the day the world ended, but he could debate the other side just as smoothly. He was lucky to be one of the living instead of one of the many members of the Sector C staff who was mauled upon first extraterrestrial contact. He was lucky to be living in the future with his youth intact whether or not the means which gave him this side effect were worth it. He was lucky to have _her._

Their circumstances were grim. Thirty-four were gone, a fact that none of them would ever take lightly. Death followed them everywhere they went. They knew that, though they’d somehow forgotten for a while. A new, heightened level of awareness needed to be established throughout the base and everywhere that rebels remained, they all needed to be reminded that even though things were better, they weren’t perfect—even more crucial in the coming months and years when children would be reintroduced into the society and pack safety would need to become the utmost priority of every single person therein. The Combine _weren’t_ gone, Xenian fauna still roamed freely across countrysides most wouldn’t yet dare to traverse, and the massacre today at White Forest served as a memo in one of the worst ways possible. A wake-up call.

Better but not perfect, yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cannot believe the next chapter that I upload will be the last. This fic started on a whim, as a way to challenge myself to do something I hadn't done since middle school: write and COMPLETE a multi-chapter story. When I say I haven't done that since middle school, that's pretty generous considering the only thing I remember about that story is it being absolutely terrible. I am overwhelmingly proud of how my writing style has evolved since I wrote the first chapter of After The Storm. Maybe (MAYBE) one day in the future I'll come back around to do some polishing and re-writing, but as it is now, I still love it despite its quirks. Okay, enough horn-tooting, I'll see you back here for the fifteenth and final chapter, as well as the most likely extensive notes at the end. Thank you so much for reading my work.


	15. Epilogue

Time slowly crept along. White Forest, in this time, remained at a constant of both too loud and far too quiet. Every day became a fraction easier for Gordon, whose wound healed nicely with continuous application of the green all-cure salve that everyone was so fond of using. They got him up on his feet by the third day of recovery, a relief and a frustration all in one as he was desperate to be moving again, but his body was less eager to tense its muscles after the trauma it had absorbed. 

An especially frustrating aspect of the situation he found himself in was the fact that he was so, very, unbelievably tired of that damn tube down his throat. If he’d have gotten shot somewhere else at least they’d be feeding him some kind of flavorless gelatin. Though he was never Jell-O’s biggest fan, he’d much prefer it over the constant burn in his sinuses. Despite the exhaustion that came with being fed through a tube coming out of his nose, he remained as bright as he could manage. Alyx never left his side—he gathered that she was most likely too scared to let him out of her sight for another moment—and the two of them had a lot to talk about. 

He saved a particularly important conversation for a silent moment when the lights had gone out and Alyx was settled into a spare mattress on the floor beside his infirmary bed.

“...I never said it back.”

“Hmm?” Alyx questioned, halfway into drifting off. “Said what?”

“‘I love you.’ I didn’t say it. But I do.”

His head turned to glance down at her, so beautiful in the blueish tone of the room, barely lit by the hallway light peeking in through the door’s window. She grinned so widely at him, and everything inside of him grew warm. “I think you don’t usually have to use your words to say things.”

There was a memorial service. Another one, to Alyx’s great dismay, having just held one for her father, though it was greatly needed. It was beautiful and tragic, no one truly wanted to be back in that dark hangar on such an otherwise peaceful afternoon. Reverend Jacobs seemed absolutely devastated to have his skill put to use for a second time in such a small window, and the picture of widows, widowers, siblings, and friends shaking on the podium as they delivered tributes to their lost was something that was burned into the folds of their brains for the rest of their lives. Another such image, almost more painful than the rest, was the image of Dr. Kleiner, wringing his hands desperately around each other as he stood there, reading from a book and yet still struggling to find his words. Alyx saw the guilt in his eyes. 

He wasn’t made for this responsibility, the one that Eli had left behind for him to receive. He wasn’t a leader, he would say. He was only a scientist. He didn’t carry the strength of his old friend, who carried on and stepped up to the so-called plate to lead the revolution, despite the loss of his wife, his leg, and his entire world. Isaac was not that man. He knew that in his heart, everyone under his leadership felt the difference, and Alyx saw the toll it took on him to have such a horrible event happen under his watch.

In the late afternoon, after the ceremony concluded, she escorted Gordon back to the room in the infirmary and then quickly found Dr. Kleiner to speak with him. After a bit of looking and asking around, she found him in his room in the dormitories, door still cracked open, head in his hands in a chair in the corner.

“Uncle Izzy?”

The concern in her voice startled him upright. “Alyx,” he sniffed, “My dear, I— I apologize. Come in, come in.”

“I had… an idea I wanted to talk to you about,” she admitted, sitting down in a chair next to his. “Dr. Kleiner… I can see you’re struggling.” He immediately shied away from her gaze. “I know you don’t want this responsibility.”

“No, I’m quite alright, I assure you,” he said with a forced smile. “Today was simply difficult. It was for all of us.”

“I want to do it.”

Isaac took a long moment to absorb what she’d said, blinking in slight shock. “You want to lead the Resistance?”

“I do. I watched my dad for years, and I think I could do it.”

“Are… Are you sure…?”

She nodded intently. “Yeah, I am.”

The two talked for a while longer, about the logistics and the information Alyx would have to inherit to do the job, with Isaac putting a great emphasis on his worry about the responsibilities she’d be taking on—but she reassured him every time that she was prepared. It was her birthright.

Gordon was elated, however similarly concerned, to hear the news. “I think that’ll be fantastic,” he’d said, gripping her hand tight and smiling wide. Another few days passed and he was officially allowed to leave the infirmary and return to sleeping in his dorm instead, with strict instructions not to overwork himself (which Alyx and Barney swore to enforce). He, of course, had plenty of opportunity to sit down at a desk and continue reading Judith’s compilations, much to his enjoyment, while Isaac was able to return to research full-time instead of balancing his duties. He was not one to show when he was struggling, but it was clear to everyone around that he was much happier this way.

Alyx flourished in her new position. There was no way that she would ever be able to live up to the important work that her father did for the Resistance for so many years, but she vowed to come as close as she possibly could, and to work hard every day to make the world safe enough that the recent event would never be able to happen again. 

Time crept along a little faster. A few more months went by. The infirmary had their hands full with women preparing in the next few weeks and months to welcome new life, a sign of birth and rebirth that all were elated to see. The attitude of the entire base shifted from dim to bursting with light, and refugees from other rebellion shanties around trickled in as soon as they got word of the second Vance and her new leadership. They wanted to be where she was, because she knew that there, they would be safe.

The zombie population seemed to slowly decrease; sightings became a rarer occurrence each day, which allowed for safer travel and more enjoyment of the outdoors than ever before. They remained diligent to protect themselves from the Combine, whose threat loomed over them as much as ever, but very few had been spotted and euthanized in this time. Alyx wondered if they’d gotten the message after their ultimate defeat in the massacre. They’d lost thirty-four, but the Combine lost well over a hundred, a heavy blow when they had no power to continue conversion of new transhuman soldiers.

Up on a hill somewhere in White Forest, the trees’ branches shook and hissed in the freezing wind, which kicked up leaves that peppered the ground. It was late autumn now, and soon enough they would get their first snowfall of the season to kick off a harsh winter. Two figures lay in the grass, staring up at one of the last blue skies they expected to see in a while. Wispy white clouds drifted lazily across their canvas, casting delicate shadows over the ground as they occasionally passed in front of the sun. The chilly breeze nipped at their noses, but they bundled accordingly, holding each one’s gloved hands tight.

“It’s so nice to be able to do this,” Gordon spoke first, a calm, content smile spread across his face. “It feels just like Boston.”

“I know, it’s amazing.” Alyx glanced over at her partner, whose scarf was covered in little brambles it picked up from the grass, and grinned at the scene.

His brow furrowed. “What?”

“You have so many brambles in your scarf,” she laughed. “We’re going to spend all night picking them out.”

“No, no, it’s a fashion statement.”

“Oh, really.”

“Mm-hmm.”

Another incredulous laugh escaped her mouth, and she decided to move to lay on her side, propped up by her arm. “Then tell me, what are the latest trends?”

“Hmmm…” he remarked, clearly thinking very hard about it. “It’s hard to put into words. You know, I’m such a fashion visionary, I think if I tried to explain it would go right over your head.”

“Uh- _huh._ Got it.”

After a moment of silence, Gordon broke his front and burst out into laughter, which she quickly joined in on as she scooted closer to lie down again, but this time resting on his shoulder. “Ow.” She sat up again for a moment to pick something out of her hair—a thistle. She raised an eyebrow and flicked it out of her hand onto his face, and he flinched and laughed as it bounced off.

“Fashion statements aren’t supposed to hurt.”

“Haven’t you ever heard the phrase ‘beauty is pain,’ Alyx?”

“You’re a pain, alright.”

With some help from the visionary lying next to her, she plucked a few more thorns from his scarf before resuming her place on his shoulder, much more comfortable this time. He took her hand back in his own. “You should’ve worn other gloves, your fingers must be freezing.”

“I’m fine, Gordon,” she replied, smiling slightly at his concern. “Yours can warm me up.”

Gordon took her closer into his grasp and began to rub her shoulder with his free hand to put some warmth back in her. “We can go inside whenever you feel like it.”

She paused, and looked back up at the sky. It looked bluer than it ever had, rays of sunlight peeking through the clouds and sending beams shooting down to create a beautiful display. Here she was, enjoying the weather and watching the clouds dance by, next to him nonetheless. She couldn’t remember a more perfect moment in her life. Everything right now was wonderful; she had Gordon, she had a stressful but extremely rewarding job, a family of people who loved her and whom she loved, and this moment. The first babies were about to be born. She didn’t know a single thing about children, having spent most of her life being one of very few around, and definitely not having interacted with one in quite some time, but she was ecstatic to see them born and to watch them grow up in a world that now contained so much hope. Maybe sometime in the future she could call one her own, and show them all of the things that her dad did to make their existence possible. She could tell them the story of how her dad and their dad saved the world together.

Things would never be one-hundred percent safe. They all knew that now. But if they just worked, continued the things that Eli, Isaac, Judith, Barney, and the rest of the Resistance have done thus far, maybe they could get close, and bring forth a new generation less scarred and damaged than the one before them. Alyx had never felt more hope.

“Just a little longer,” she decided. “I like it out here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, there it is—my love letter to Half Life and Freemance, completed. I sincerely hope you enjoyed this fic, and I want to thank you so very much for taking the time to read it and give kudos. As I said in the notes on the previous chapter, this was a huge feat for me and I'm incredibly proud of myself. I couldn't have done it alone, though.
> 
> I want to extend my thanks to benignmilitancy for talking to me through all of this and inspiring a lot of the contents of the later chapters. She's a good friend to talk to and an absolute idea machine. Thank you, benign!   
> Though she'll most likely never see this, I'd also like to say thank you to wafflestories, author of the portal fic Blue Sky. I read that when I was thirteen, YEARS before I played Half Life, and it opened my eyes to how wonderful and fulfilling fanfiction can be.  
> And of course, thank you so much to everyone else who has helped me in some way, whether by giving me inspiration or simply leaving me a kind word. I appreciate all of it more than I can say.


End file.
